Many Australian companies have offices in each capital city of Australia. As Australia is a large country and continent the time it takes for Internet packets and data to travel between these capital cities is significant in todays IT reliant world. With many businesses adopting cloud based applications and desktops, the distance between these cities becomes relevant and decisive for the location of core infrastructure and human resources.
Australia has also transitioned from a dedicated telephony system to a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) for its country wide phone infrastructure. Putting the reliance, reliability and performance of these phone systems on the ISPs and other service providers. Again, any network latency issues within Australia will significantly effect the voice quality of phone calls if not properly managed and maintained.
The below table is a combination of calculations and real-time measurements from within the PIP network to each capital. All distances are approximates for calculation only. Calculations have been made at a fibre level and some measures have been added for repeaters and network infrastructure. A approximation of 3 hops was assumed for all.
The Latency for straight optical fibre is 5us (micro second) per 1km. Calculated from the speed of light, divided by the fibre core’s index of refraction (around 1.5 for glass).
PIP has multiple fibre feeds and peering arrangements with datacentres across Australia, if your intercity data latency is not up to spec, please feel free to talk to one of PIPs data engineers today.
Australia Capital City Latency Speeds and Times
| Capital Cities | Distance Kilometres | Distance Miles | Typical Latency ms |
| Sydney – Brisbane | 800 Kilometres | 500 Miles | 12 ms |
| Sydney – Melbourne | 800 Kilometres | 500 Miles | 12 ms |
| Sydney – Canberra | 280 Kilometres | 174 Miles | 7 ms |
| Melbourne – Adelaide | 700 Kilometres | 434 Miles | 11 ms |
| Melbourne – Hobart | 650 Kilometres | 404 Miles | 10 ms |
| Adelaide – Perth | 2500 Kilometres | 1554 Miles | 28 ms |
| Adelaide – Darwin | 3200 Kilometres | 1988 Miles | 32 ms |
| Brisbane – Darwin | 3000 Kilometres | 1864 Miles | |
| Multi-hop Extrapolated Calculations | |||
| Sydney – Adelaide | 1500 Kilometres | 932 Miles | 22 – 24 ms |
| Sydney – Perth | 4000 Kilometres | 2485 Miles | 48 – 50 ms |
| Sydney – Darwin (Via Adelaide) | 4000 Kilometres | 2485 Miles | 50 – 52 ms |
| Sydney – Darwin (Via Brisbane) | 3800 Kilometres | 2361 Miles | |
| Sydney – Hobart | 1450 Kilometres | 900 Miles | 24 – 28 ms |
