On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 3:21 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

     For very high latency you could just use a global sneakernet.
     [1]http://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ has some numbers.

   quoted from that site:
   "Cisco estimates that total internet traffic currently averages 167
   terabits per second. FedEx has a fleet of 654 aircraft with a lift
   capacity of 26.5 million pounds daily. A solid-state laptop drive
   weighs about 78 grams and can hold up to a terabyte.

   "That means FedEx is capable of transferring 150 exabytes of data per
   day, or 14 petabits per second—almost a hundred times the current
   throughput of the internet."

   i imagine most with mathematical instinct would think something
   'real-world' is missing in this approximation, in that you could not
   realistically use-up all FedEx resources for such a data sharing
   project without likely taking down the system or being denied access-
   and thus existing traffic and congestion are not included in this ideal
   naive model.

   what would actually occur if you tried to use all FedEx shipping
   resources on a single day, and then after considering that, doing so
   repeatedly day after day. not only is I/O data transfer omitted (time
   needed to access/store/exchange data between platforms), though also
   hardware failures which, perhaps i am wrong- packet technology succeeds
   in transferring via multiple attempts and thus the 'internet traffic'
   of 167 terabits could potentially includes delivery failures and
   successful resends, and routing around congestion- whereas it is
   completely unrealistic to assume you could decide to ship such material
   and use up all "network" resources of FedEx without considering its
   tolerances for additional bandwidth to cover this parallelism, and also
   limits of local delivery or to various locations in an overnight
   scenario-- so delays would likely be involved, and if any data on
   laptop drives were to fail it would seemingly require reshipment to
   compare to the internet data transmission approach. or not.

   it is not to lose grasp of the notion, only to consider it in its
   depth, and knowing what may feasibly and more actually occur in such a
   scenario could provide a more accurate understanding of the limits of
   analogies without corresponding matched dimensions. such that maybe it
   would not be as efficient or as easy or even possible, as believed.
   though the simple mathematical comparison makes it appear so. and most
   comparisons of this nature often have similar 'modeling errors' where
   approximations function in an ideological realm as a result, though
   likewise makes for interesting considerations in considering where the
   gap is between what is said and what exists as a situation.

References

   1. http://what-if.xkcd.com/31/