Besides the refractive index of glass that makes like go about 2/3rds it can in a vacuum, "Stuff" also includes many other things like modulation/demodulation, buffers, etc. I did a quora answer on this you can find at: https://www.quora.com/How-can-one-describe-the-delay-characteristics-of-ping... On 6/20/20 9:29 AM, Joe Greco wrote:
On Sat, Jun 20, 2020 at 09:24:11AM -0700, William Herrin wrote:
Howdy,
Why is latency between the east and west coasts so bad? Speed of light accounts for about 15ms each direction for a 30ms round trip. Where does the other 30ms come from and why haven't we gotten rid of it?
c = 186,282 miles/second 2742 miles from Seattle to Washington DC mainly driving I-90
2742/186282 ~= 0.015 seconds
Speed of light in a fiber is more like 124K miles per second. It depends on the refractive index. And of course amplifiers and stuff.
... JG