Longitudinal Analysis of Inter-City Network Delays.

During the last decades, public and private investments contributed to building the Internet infrastructure, including undersea cables, long-distance fiber links, broadband networks, and satellite constellations to reduce end-to-end delay. In this study, we measure the inter-city delays over the last six years, considering 17 major metropolitan areas around the globe. Our analysis shows that the delay for 88% of city pairs end-to-end delay has decreased. Moreover, we study delay changes for regional and long-haul (intercontinental) pairs. Our analysis shows that end-to-end delay has decreased for 80% and 55% of city pairs in Europe and North America, respectively. Our study also shows that despite the overall decrease in intercity delays, global phenomena, e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic, profoundly impact many inter-city connections simultaneously while not affecting others.