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Comment by nomel | Hacker News Reader

The craziest thing is, if you’re using Ethernet, there’s a very high chance you have an actual physical data connection with the other computer on the other side of the world. A giant physical web blanketing the Earth.

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Well, that's not new with computers or the internet. We had that ever since the analog telephone system. Even telegraphs before that for a smaller set of points and routes.

I imagine we're somewhere near peak density though, or maybe even past it. Wireless will slowly remove your fingers from laying on that physical web.

Really no. The RF world has nothing on fiber and copper for density.

There is almost unlimited desire for bandwidth in the access layer and over subscription ratios are still very very high.

The transition to 800G ports and then post-800G is not even warmed up yet. You can run the entire country of Australia on a backbone of two dozen routers today because of the lack of endpoint access bandwidth.

We are at a place where bandwidth is once again plentiful in the core … not so much on the edge. Sort of like 2003 when oc768 created that situation.

Why isn't wireless physical? Perhaps it's not massive :)

In what sense? What's a physical data connection? There's a shit ton of routers and switches in between, it's not like there's an electrical connection.

You could run your finger across from my keyboard to yours, without a single break in the continuous physical connection between them. Connector clips included, of course. ;)

I understand that you are being poetic, but just in case someone reads this as fact: you are describing a dedicated circuit - which is what telephones used. The internet works on packet switching, so there are numerous little breaks between the signal and receiver as your data is routed along a "connection".

No, I'm talking about the physical layer of the OSI model, and including the mechanical connections between those physical interfaces. You're talking about the link layer.

Unless your backbone/computer has a wireless hop, a literal, uninterrupted, physical chain of physical electronic devices, physically connected to one another with wires/cables, goes from my keyboard to yours. This is literal, not poetic. I'm not saying a galvanic connection. I'm saying a physical connection where, if nothing was bolted down, and high tension cables were used, I could pull and you would feel it.

AT&T had wireless microwave towers for phones and tv, so I imagine there was a period near the end if its life where some dial-up connections weren't physically connected:

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/vintage-skynet-atts-a...

Working for a Midwest dialup isp in the early 2000s, we definitely served some of our smaller POPs with PTP wireless backbones, thanks in part to vast expanses of flat land with fairly tall structures dotted throughout.

Yes, and if the comment implied a purely electrical connection, it is likely not the case either, as there is electrical to optical and vice versa transitions throughout.

I don't know, I alternate between thinking that's remarkable and not so much. I could run that connection via the power grid too, or the water supply (if we were in the same city).

Edit: I concede it's actually pretty remarkable. It is like the nervous system of the planet. Sure there's not a purely electrical continuity, but neuron synapses don't have an electrical nature either.

Are you sure? As far as I'm aware a single city might have its electricity network split in a few macro areas, and not really connected to each other. The Internet, on the other hand, needs all nodes to be connected somehow (and I bet the vast majority of connections are physical).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss...

This is true but on a much larger scale than the city. For example, the United States has only three electrical grids (East, West, and Texas). Within those areas, not only are all electricity users in some sense connected, they are all /synchronous/, meaning that the 60hz coming out of your wall peaks and troughs at the same exact time as the 60hz at your cousin's house two states away.

The grids also have interconnections with one another, but they happen via DC to avoid needing to synchronize the whole continent.

In a literal sense, modernity is about using energy to coordinate human activity across vast distances at minute time scales. We normally think about this in terms of transportation, telegraphy, telephony, print, broadcasting, and the internet but it's also true of the motors in our washing machines and factories.

Somebody might be running wireless in there at some point. But I agree it's a neat thought.

Never though of it this way. Right!

Similarly, every time you step onto a road, you're stepping on a contiguous strip of pavement that spans the entire continent

My lifetime of road trips is just a really inefficient flood fill

I often daydream about this one and wonder if there is continuous asphalt from me (Sweden) down to South East Asia or if there are any breaks.

When I search for answers right now, AH1 looks like a candidate, but no confirmation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AH1

Even more remarkable with rail.

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