Comment by PhasmaFelis
2 years ago
I read a story about a university IT guy with a professor complaining that he couldn't access any websites hosted more than 100 miles away. (Or thereabouts, I forget the exact numbers.) Which is obviously nonsense; computers don't know "miles", only network relays.
Long story short, an idle timeout variable had been set to 0 milliseconds, so any connection that took 1+ ms failed, so you could only connect to systems within 0.5 light-milliseconds of the university, which is about 100 miles.
Related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576633
And we've come full circle, since I presume OP found this article linked from the comments on that one.
I'd actually read the story years and years ago, thus the poorly-remembered details. Total coincidence that it was posted here today. Unless someone here read one article and was inspired to post the other :)
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