physical distances vs. net distances

[Paul]

On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 20:20 -0500, david wrote:
> Jeff's comment about grabbing from a local mirror got me thinking about 
> distances to mirrors. So, I tried tracing the route to my local 
> University of Wisconsin, Madison mirror about 5 Miles down the road in 
> the Comp. Sci. building.  For some odd reason sbcglobal is routing that 
> traffic through Chicago, Ill and back, about a 300 mile round trip.  
> Pinging is fast and my dsl line to always maxed out.  There must be some 
> bizarrely fat pipes between Madison and Chicago;  I might as well look 
> for a mirror in Chicago.
> -dtf

Similar situation here ... I've found that physical distance has little
to do with throughput.  Charter used to route traffic though NY/SF ... I
sometimes would get faster throughput by downloading from European or
Asian sites.  I still do use the UW Madison mirror since I figure my tax
dollars are paying for it and I should use it instead of somebody
else's.

Paul