Digital Plymouth: The Cost of Latency.

1. Mark Craddock
Managing Director – Flexible Computing Ltd

2.  Latency
 is a time delay between the moment something is
initiated, and the moment one of its effects
begins or becomes detectable.

3.  Latency
 The word derives from the fact that during the
period of latency the effects of an action are
latent, meaning "potential" or "not yet observed".
...
 Nothing happens during this period

4.  Google Example
 Google surveyed users and asked would you like 10, 20, or 30
results. Users unanimously wanted 30
 Google increased the number of search results to thirty. Traffic
and revenue from Google in the experimental group dropped by
20%
 Analysis: The page with 10 results took .4 seconds to generate.
The page with 30 results took .9 seconds.
 Analysis: Revenue dropped by 20 % due to the latency of
displaying 30 results was 0.5 seconds more than the latency of
displaying 10
 Adding the checkout icon (a shopping cart) to search results
made the page 2% slower with a corresponding 2% drop in
searches / user.

5.  Trading: In today’s world of electronic trading, “a
millisecond advantage in trading applications can be
worth $100 million a year to a major brokerage firm.”

6.  AOL: Page views drop off as page load times
increase. Users in the top decile of page load
times view ~7.5 pages/visit. This drops to ~6
pages/visit in the 3rd decile, and bottoms out at
~5 pages/visit for users with the slowest page
load times.
 Shopzilla: A year-long performance redesign
resulted in a 5 second speed up (from ~7 seconds
to ~2 seconds). This resulted in a 25% increase in
page views, a 7-12% increase in revenue, and a
50% reduction in hardware.

7.  Latency should be the single most primary
concern for the Digital Plymouth Project.
 If we (Tax Payers) are to fund and host a Data
Centre in Plymouth it must provide the
lowest latency services possible, if we don’t,
the data centre will be a very cold and empty
space!

8.  Use the lowest latency connections possible!

9.  Apollo Transatlantic Cable
 Tier 1 Internet Access
 Bude Cable Station
 Co-Location Facility
 Carrier Agnostic
 Dual Redundant Routes

10.  <5ms Latency to Docklands
 Enables synchronous data replication
 <34ms Latency to New York
 Enables asynchronous data replication
Plymouth London
Bude
Businesses Businesses
Plymouth Cable Station
London Surrey
IXP
POP PLINX L/S Apollo POP
H2O - ISP
London IXP
Latency - 5 ms

11.  TATA Transatlantic Cable
 Tier 1 Internet Access
 Highbridge Cable Station
 Co-Location Facility
 Carrier Agnostic
 Dual Redundant Route, Poddington, Barnstable
 Initial Discussions to provide 10Gb Connectivity to
Plymouth

12.  <5ms Latency to Docklands
 Enable synchronous data replication
 <34ms Latency to New York
 Enables asynchronous data replication
Plymouth London
Highbridge
Businesses Businesses
Plymouth Cable Station
London Surrey
IXP
POP PLINX L/S TATA POP
H2O - ISP
London IXP
Latency - 5 ms

13.  Opportunities
 Olympic Bids
▪ Low Latency Services – Docklands
▪ Connection Direct USA
 Data Centre Services
▪ Hosting, Co-Location, Disaster Recovery Facilities
 ICT Service Organisations
▪ No Longer Located Next to Data Centre
 Call Centres (VOIP Applications)
▪ Student Population

14.  Google provides a user interface for the language
Bork! Bork! Bork!
 The Swedish Chef is a Muppet that appeared on The
Muppet Show. He was operated by Jim Henson and
Frank Oz simultaneously
 He was one of the few Muppets to employ an actual
puppeteer's hands, originally Oz's – that is, they were
visible to the audience through his sleeves and
facilitated handling food and utensils.
 http://www.google.com/intl/xx-bork/