500-mile limit

web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles
FAQ on the 500-mile email

A university department found its emails couldn’t travel more than 500 miles (about 800 km). This happened because a faulty update made the server’s waiting time for a response too short.

Internet signals travel fast, but not instantly. Responses from distant servers arrived too late, so the emails failed to send. The server’s short waiting time turned the speed limit into a distance limit!


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