the answer was D, the speed of light. here's the problem. this is the most direct path from LA to Berlin. 9334km, at the speed of light is a round trip time of 62ms. but obviously this requires a no-stop cable that runs directly through some Big Shit and thats not feasible https://twitter.com/chhopsky/status/1308989660421599236

if you tried to go across the US as quickly as possible, then straight to germany, all of a sudden you're up to 12,345km. 82ms round trip time. getting shitty now, and this is with zero hops. but you can't dedicate a cable to this, you NEED hops so people can jump on and off

the actual international cable map .. looks like this

with the number of hops required to make this path even close to making sense, including crossing the US, the actual distance traversed just keeps growing and growing, and it doesnt take long before it's totally fucked

sorry fam, the speed of light is just too slow

no NA/EU superserver, its not tech it's physics

anyway 49.2% of you were right, and the amount of correct tailed off with the correctness of answers. international congestion is a factor but not THE limiting factor

server capacity is an issue but not for superserver application

satellites was the only truly 100% wrong answer