The Computer Oracle

Ping faster than light

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Music by Eric Matyas
https://www.soundimage.org
Track title: Quiet Intelligence

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Chapters
00:00 Question
01:13 Accepted answer (Score 407)
02:04 Thank you

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Full question
https://superuser.com/questions/921221/p...

Accepted answer links:
[CDN]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_del...
[Cloudflare uses Anycast]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-brief-anyc.../
[Wikipedia info]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast
[data centers]: https://www.cloudflare.com/network-map

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Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

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Tags
#networking #ping

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 411


As you can see from the output, you aren’t actually pinging some server in Arizona or even the United States. Apparently, they decided to protect their website with Cloudflare, which employs a content distribution network to even the load. A CDN works with many nodes, each servicing a (geographic) region. That means the node you’re pinging is very close to you.

Because Cloudflare uses Anycast (Wikipedia info) with all of their data centers, you’ll connect to the same IP address no matter where you are in the world. Every data center offers all services. Internet routers decide on the best route (to the closest/best reachable data center) and direct your connection that way.