You can tell I had a slightly bored lunchtime, as I spent it doing some trace routes and looking up their geo-location information (such as was available). The reason? I wanted to figure how insanely long-distance communications between me and my boss technically are.
From my office, if I want to visit my boss in person, then I go up a set of stairs, and take a very short walk along a corridor. However, we tend to use email a lot more often... so I was wondering just how much further that actually is. The internal email system is rubbish, so we use our own external email systems... his is based on a server in New York (as far as I can tell), and mine is based on a server somewhere in Germany. Here's the approximate route traced by my system:
- Paisley (University)
- Glasgow
- London
- San Francisco
- New York (mail server #1)
- San Francisco
- Germany (mail server #2)
- London
- Glasgow
- Paisley (University)
My geography has never been terribly good, but looking at a map, I make that at least
9000 miles! (Probably much longer, given that cables are never in a straight line over those kinds of distances.)
Ironically, of course, an email between our offices is likely to arrive faster than we could on-foot. The Internet is amazing when you think about it!
