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Re:The internet doesn't care about multiplayer games by tapland on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @08:05AM (#21761986)
It takes <67 ms for light to travel half the circumferance of earth. From my location in Europe to Chicago it takes 26 ms.

Cables aren't laid out straight, but network infrastructure adds a majority of the cross continental latency.

But gaming from the moon would not at all be feasible using light. I wonder how we could solve this for future space communications.

Re:The internet doesn't care about multiplayer games by Retric on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @09:33AM (#21762677)
When a server sends some state to a player, they player can’t get a response back without a round trip. The same is true in reverse. Further, the path through fiber optical cables is not the strait nor are fiber optic cables a vacuum. Using lasers through a vacuum tube strait from the user to a server on the other side of the planet might hit 134ms of light lag which is already a significant issue for many games.

PS: LEO satellite constellations like Starlink have a lower theoretical latency around the world than fiber as the signals are traveling in space, but a longer path. Significantly beating that is going to require magic aka a useful fundamental change in the laws of physics as we know them.

Re:The internet doesn't care about multiplayer games by imInGoodCompany on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @08:59AM (#21762334)
Short answer is: we can't :/ the speed of causality is not something we can "solve".