Yeah, the reason ethernet is generally faster compared with wifi is mainly due to dropped packets due to interference from physical objects between the device and the transmitter. Not as much an issue when you’re issuing commands into the vacuum of space from large, high-powered antennas.
Comment on NASA Ping
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 4 months agofun fact, that would make the transmission slower.
According to wikipedia cat5 cable has a propagation delay of 5.30 ns/m, which works out to about 62% of the speed of light. While radio waves propagate at the speed of light.
LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 4 months ago
hehe, imagine a tcp handshake with voyager
Boxscape@lemmy.sdf.org 4 months ago
zaphod@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
Radio waves always propagate at the speed of light, it’s just that the effective speed of light in copper and glass fibre is lower than that in air/vacuum.
psud@aussie.zone 4 months ago
Speed of light in fiberoptic cable is slower than c for a different reason. The light is in something close to vacuum, signals travel slower than c because the light doesn’t follow a straight path, it zig zags bouncing off the walls.
A radio wave or laser in reasonable vacuum (in orbit for example) will be lower latency than a signal on a fiber link the same length
I’m expecting lower ping via starlink than fiber once starlink has laser links between satellites
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Some fiber-optic cables are faster than others, because they’re full of air. Hollow-core fibers have a large central cutout and/or a close hexagonal packing of smaller glass tubes. The latter are technically a “photonic crystal.”
tentacles9999@lemmynsfw.com 4 months ago
Just have to wait until cat 9 comes out with gravitational lensing
MeatPilot@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Or we need to move Mars closer to plug it into a 6ft Ethernet.