cISP: A Speed-of-Light Internet Service Provider

TL;DR

cISP proposes a cost-effective wide-area network design that combines fiber and free-space wireless to achieve near-light-speed latency, significantly improving interactive application performance across large regions.

Contribution

This paper introduces cISP, a novel network architecture that approaches the speed of light in vacuum for data transmission, combining fiber optics with free-space wireless to reduce latency.

Findings

Achieves mean latencies within 5% of the speed-of-light limit over large distances.

Supports scalable bandwidth while maintaining low latency.

Economic analysis suggests high value exceeding costs.

Abstract

Low latency is a requirement for a variety of interactive network applications. The Internet, however, is not optimized for latency. We thus explore the design of cost-effective wide-area networks that move data over paths very close to great-circle paths, at speeds very close to the speed of light in vacuum. Our cISP design augments the Internet's fiber with free-space wireless connectivity. cISP addresses the fundamental challenge of simultaneously providing low latency and scalable bandwidth, while accounting for numerous practical factors ranging from transmission tower availability to packet queuing. We show that instantiations of cISP across the contiguous United States and Europe would achieve mean latencies within 5% of that achievable using great-circle paths at the speed of light, over medium and long distances. Further, we estimate that the economic value from such networks would substantially exceed their expense.