[scott_karana]

You're point is solid, but can you clear up some confusion for me? I'm not sure whether:

1) Round-trip times from Australia to the USA are truly as bad as 266ms

2) You're confusing ping's RTTs with one-way trips

3) You're assuming DNS has a syn/ack, which it doesn't.

EDIT: I suspect you realize there's no syn/ack in DNS based on your other comments... :)

[squeaky-clean]

I live on the east coast of the USA. Speedtest.net says my ping to my nearest server is 26ms, and to Sydney is 259ms. So it seems it really is that bad.

[tedchs]

When we say "bad", let's remember that that's very close to the speed of light through fiber.

[scott_karana]

Thanks! That's depressing. :(