Cuba's Internet Connection to the World Worse Than Expected

Cuba's Internet Connection to the World Worse Than Expected
Nov 02, 2015 12:16 PM

Inspired by expansion announcements from companies such as Netflix and
Airbnb into Cuba, Fabián E. Bustamante, professor of electrical
engineering and computer science in the McCormick School of Engineering,
and his graduate student Zachary Bischof, conducted research examining
feasibility of the business ideas given the region's notoriously weak
network infrastructure. Cuba's Internet connection to the rest of the
world was found even worse than expected. "During their study,
Bustamante and Bischof found that when a person in Havana searched for a
topic on Google, for example, the request traveled through the marine
cable to Venezuela, then through another marine cable to the United
States, and finally landed at a Google server in Dallas, Texas. When the
search results traveled back, it went to Miami, Florida, up to the
satellite, and then back to Cuba. While the information out of Cuba took
60-70 milliseconds, it took a whopping 270 milliseconds to travel back…
It takes so long that it's almost useless."

Source: Cuba's Internet Connection to the World Worse Than Expected -
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