I will note that this is the case for conventional fiber-optic cable. The newer hollow-core fiber cables transmit light at nearly c. As far as I know hollow-core has not seen wide-spread use, but it will be interesting if trans-continental connections switch over.
That's a great point, I was curious so I looked it up. Google offered the following:
"The speed of light in air is about 299,705 kilometers per second, or 2.99705 × 10^8 meters per second. This is almost as fast as light travels in a vacuum, slowing down by only three ten-thousandths of the speed of light."
So seems like the speed of light in atmosphere is still a lot faster than fiber.
The speed of light in a vacuum is roughly 50% higher than the speed of light in fiber.
I will note that this is the case for conventional fiber-optic cable. The newer hollow-core fiber cables transmit light at nearly c. As far as I know hollow-core has not seen wide-spread use, but it will be interesting if trans-continental connections switch over.
Will adopting the new cables everywhere mean nearly halving latency all across the board? Sans routing latencies.
This would be huge for realtime gaming across continents.
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The area between a starlink receiver on the ground and a satellite isn’t a vacuum
That's a great point, I was curious so I looked it up. Google offered the following:
"The speed of light in air is about 299,705 kilometers per second, or 2.99705 × 10^8 meters per second. This is almost as fast as light travels in a vacuum, slowing down by only three ten-thousandths of the speed of light."
So seems like the speed of light in atmosphere is still a lot faster than fiber.
The speed of light in air is 99.97% of that in a vacuum, vs about 2/3 of c through fiber.
Is attenuation in a vacuum also better?
yes, glass has a non zero amount of absorption which is why Erbium amplification is required.
Also, as pointed out elsewhere, the number of hops is the biggest contributor to latency.