Transatlantic ping faster than sending a pixel to the screen?
I can send an IP packet to Europe faster than I can send a pixel to the screen. How f’d up is that?
And if this weren’t John Carmack, I’d file it under “the interwebs being silly”.
But this is John Carmack.
How can this be true?
To avoid discussions about what exactly is meant in the tweet, this is what I would like to get answered:
How long does it take, in the best case, to get a single IP packet sent from a server in the US to somewhere in Europe, measuring from the time that a software triggers the packet, to the point that it’s received by software above driver level?
How long does it take, in the best case, for a pixel to be displayed on the screen, measured from the point where a software above driver level changes that pixel’s value?
