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I am looking to build something where you can have a workstation/server in one location, and access it remotely using a video stream of the screen to do as you wish. My reason for wanting low latency is I want to make it possible to say game on it. So I am looking for sub 100 milliseconds but would really like to get under 50 milliseconds.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to make this possible, or if it is even theoretically possible?

peterh
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Josh Kirby
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  • Very weird idea: maybe some tv channel solution? Well, it wouldn't be a clear IT solution, but it would be really-really realtime. :-) – peterh Apr 03 '15 at 02:48
  • Increase the speed of light, or move closer to the server. – Michael Hampton Apr 03 '15 at 02:48
  • @MichaelHampton Light travels 15000km in 50 ms, thus he has probably simpler solutions as well, at least on this planet. – peterh Apr 03 '15 at 02:49
  • @peterh Broadcast TV signals have latency. You also have to get the control signal back to the source, which adds additional latency. – EEAA Apr 03 '15 at 02:50
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    @peterh And many of those 15000 km are inside the circuit traces in routers! – Michael Hampton Apr 03 '15 at 02:50
  • @EEAA True, but their latency is derived directly from speed of light, which travels 15000km in 50ms. In the control you have right, but it needs only a very narrow bandwidth and thus it can be solved cheaply with low latency. – peterh Apr 03 '15 at 02:52
  • @MichaelHampton True, it depends heavily on the distance (both physical & router hops). Maybe if he can lay a tv cable, he can solve the visual client connection by a tv tuner card, and the control channel by some guaranteed low-latency solution vnc. – peterh Apr 03 '15 at 02:55
  • @peterh Why are you hung up on the TV thing? If he can lay a TV cable, it would be a far better solution to just lay fiber optic. – EEAA Apr 03 '15 at 02:56
  • @EEAA Because I so love the non-trivial hw solutions. :-) Btw, you have right. – peterh Apr 03 '15 at 02:57
  • Would lay cable if it was possible but for this project it is not since this is something to be used in many locations, if it was just between 2 places I would pay for a dedicated cable from Bell. – Josh Kirby Apr 03 '15 at 03:00

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Put the two systems right next to each other, connected directly.

Honestly.

There is no way to cheat the speed of light. Additionally, there is no possible way to reduce latency when using internet circuits that are not under your control (which is more or less any time two systems communicated over the internet).

EEAA
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  • Putting the two systems next to each other is not close to the idea. Idea is to be able to have close to the actually experience of being in front of the system as possible from a location that is semi close say 20km away. – Josh Kirby Apr 03 '15 at 02:52
  • @JoshKirby I know that's "not close to the idea". I mentioned it as a way of communicating that short of running your own fiber optic lines, there is likely very little you can do. 20km away geographically means *nothing* as far as where the packets go. Your ping from one place to the other may very well travel 500km, and short of running your own infrastructure, there's nothing you can do about that. – EEAA Apr 03 '15 at 02:55
  • I get it can go 500km away, and running my own infrastructure is very impractical. I am looking for way either hardware or software level to not introduce un-needed latency. Say a switch is super slow or something or running code in a particular way is slower than another someone on here knows is better for this kind of application. – Josh Kirby Apr 03 '15 at 02:58
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    @JoshKirby This will be my last comment on the issue. I cannot state it any more clearly: **There is nothing you can do**. Hardware, software, chants, meditations, animal sacrifices, or anything else. If reducing latency were possible using any of these methods, companies would have already patented the means of doing so, and you or I could go to the store and purchase a magic "latency reducing plugin" for our network. – EEAA Apr 03 '15 at 03:00