I am curious your use case where latency is currently an impediment. Sure, nobody likes lag, but outside of pro gaming and HFT, where is the need?
New York to LA is ~60msec
New York to Hong Kong is ~250msec
New York to LA is ~60msec
New York to Hong Kong is ~250msec
Another big one is optimizing applications for number of round trips, which most people don’t do, and it can be surprisingly hard to do so.
I am a throughput freak, but you’d be surprised at the importance of latency, even (especially?) for throughput, in practice. It’s absolutely not just a “real-time” thing.
If you’re on Linux, you can use ‘netem’ to emulate packet loss, latency etc. Chrome dev tools have something similar too, it’s an eye opening experience if you’re used to fast reliable internet.
Windows was quite happy to give me a 40,960 * 512 = 20,971,520 byte TCP window for a single stream speed test from mid US to London, run via Chrome. Linux is the only one I've noticed with stingy max buffers. I never really understood why user-focused distros like to keep the max so limited when there are plenty of resources.
> I never really understood why user-focused distros like to keep the max so limited when there are plenty of resources.
Yeah, agreed. That is way too conservative, especially for an issue which most people can’t easily triage.
You have around 150ms of one-way latency before perceptual quality starts to nose dive (see https://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-G.114-200305-I). This includes the capture, processing, transmission, decoding, and reproduction of signals. Throw in some acoustic propagation delay at either end in room scale systems and milliseconds count.
Gaming explodes into online VR where latency is incredibly noticeable, I still think virtual shopping will become a thing, everyone buys crap online now but it's nice to be able to "see" a product before you buy it.
As we start getting autonomous vehicles/delivery drones etc they can all make use of the lowest latency link possible.
Lower latency also usually means (but not always) lower power usage aka the "race to sleep".
It would also enable better co-ordination between swarms of x, whether it's aforementioned delivery drones, missile defence systems (which launch site is better to launch from, stationary or mobile) etc.
But also just human ingenuity and invention, we should always try to make it faster just because we can, at the end of the day.
But for much else idm at all, people buy tonnes of stuff off Amazon based on 2d pics already.
These days I believe there is less “optical only regen” and more IP-connected links.