[ih] Design choices in SMTP

[Grant Taylor]

On 2/7/23 11:37 AM, Guy Almes via Internet-history wrote:
> <> and the speed of light got worse.  I mostly mean this in the sense 
> that it didn't get any better, while processing and transmission both 
> got much faster.

This is an interesting take on -- what I believe is called -- the 
propagation delay becoming a larger proportion / percentage of the delay 
as things around it got better / faster.

> But it's also true in the literal sense that wide-area networks 
> were largely built with microwave in the 1980s (or geosynchronous 
> satellites), while they are built with fiber optic circuits now. 
> And the speed of light through fiber is about 2/3 the speed of 
> light through air (or space).

This floored me the first time I heard about it.

> (The new generation of LEO satellite networks could change this in 
> some interesting ways, but that's still an emerging technology.)

}:-)



-- 
Grant. . . .
unix || die