Packet Journey: How a Message Travels the Internet
Follow one message from a phone in Tokyo: as packets through the home’s optical fibre, across the floor of the Pacific to one server in Los Angeles, and back as a reply.
Stopwatch0.0 msOne-way distance0 m
Prologue · 1/9
The moment you press send, stop time
In a room in Tokyo, you send a message with a photo attached. From the tap to the reply appearing on screen takes about 0.44 seconds. In that span, barely longer than a blink, the message crosses the floor of the Pacific, reaches a data center in Los Angeles, and comes home as a reply. From here, time runs 2,000 times slower so you can follow the whole trip from the start. The first way out is the phone in your hand.
Turn the phone around and find the parts that send out the radio signal. The stopwatch and the distance meter on screen build up as the journey goes on.
About 0.38 of those 0.44 seconds is light travelling back and forth through glass on the sea floor. You will see why for yourself.
In this scene
Packet Journey: How a Message Travels the Internet - Luneidea
