Comment by denotational

The original source linked from this post [0] is using models that assume exponential growth of bandwidths over time (see the JavaScript at the bottom of the page): this is fun, but these figures are real things that can be measured, so I think it’s very misleading for the site in this link to present them without explaining they’re basically made up.

The 1Gb network latency figure on this post is complete nonsense (I left another comment about this further down); looking at the source data it’s clear that this is because this isn’t based on a 1Gb network, but rather a “commodity NIC” with this model, and the quoted figure is for a 200Gb network:

    function getNICTransmissionDelay(payloadBytes) {
            // NIC bandwidth doubles every 2 years
            // [source: http://ampcamp.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ion-stoica-amp-camp-21012-warehouse-scale-computing-intro-final.pdf]
            // TODO: should really be a step function
            // 1Gb/s = 125MB/s = 125*10^6 B/s in 2003
            // 125*10^6 = a*b^x
            // b = 2^(1/2)
            // -> a = 125*10^6 / 2^(2003.5)
            var a = 125 * Math.pow(10,6) / Math.pow(2,shift(2003) * 0.5);
            var b = Math.pow(2, 1.0/2);
            var bw = a * Math.pow(b, shift(year));
        // B/s * s/ns = B/ns
            var ns = payloadBytes / (bw / Math.pow(10,9));
            return ns;
        }

[0] https://colin-scott.github.io/personal_website/research/inte...