Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

There are many explanations which are simpler, that don't require faster than light photons.

In particular, your network path is sending you to a server which is in australia.

$ host 184.24.249.86 86.249.24.184.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer a184-24-249-86.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com.

trimmed mtr output:

19. sun1-ge5-0.gw.optusnet.com.au 57.1% 8 186.4 184.9 182.1 186.4 2.3 20. 198.142.144.70 42.9% 8 186.9 182.6 180.3 186.9 2.9 21. sun1-ge12-0-0-500.gw.optusnet.com.au 0.0% 7 179.7 180.3 179.5 182.3 0.8 a184-24-249-86.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com 22. 198.142.144.70 0.0% 7 185.6 184.6 179.5 194.2 4.9 a184-24-249-86.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com 23. a184-24-249-86.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com 0.0% 7 185.1 184.0 178.8 187.8 2.8

that's a cache of MIT's web site hosted in Australia (Akamai edge cache)

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/ratul/akamai.h...

geoip is worthless in many situations, this being one of them.



Also, most routers implement ICMP on a slow path (not on the data plane) so the reported latency can be higher than the path latency.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: