The Last Mile Problem

Intercontinental fiber is blazingly fast, but the last mile — the connection from the local network hub to your home — is often the bottleneck. This final stretch might use older copper phone lines (DSL), coaxial cable, or, if you are lucky, fiber to the home.

The distance matters more than you think. Data traveling from New York to London crosses 5,500 km of cable at two-thirds the speed of light, adding roughly 30 milliseconds of unavoidable latency each way — a delay no amount of engineering can eliminate.