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INAP in the News: Mary Jane Horne Discusses Latency and the Edge at DICE Southeast

INAP’s Mary Jane Horne, SVP of Global Network, was part of a lineup of experts at Bisnow’s Data Center Investment Conference and Expo in Atlanta, Georgia, where she drew on her expertise with all things network.

She was featured in a Bisnow article, covering the importance of minimizing latency in the gaming industry, the edge and why it depends on the rest of your network to meet growing needs.

On different applications’ tolerance for latency:

“Even today, latency matters, although that need for speed depends on what the user is doing with it. Delivery of data at less than five milliseconds could be overkill for, say, a phone app that looks up recipes. But for trading stocks, a delay by even a millisecond could translate into lost money, INAP Senior Vice President Mary Jane Horne said.”

On the need for ultra-low latency in gaming:

“Latency also matters in more consumer-driven industries like gaming. Voice data is sent separately from the graphics a player sees on the screen. If there’s a delay in a player barking instructions to teammates playing, say, Fortnite, that would be intolerable to them, Horne said. ‘So you’re already dead before the guy told you to turn around. You can’t have that,’ she said.”

On how the edge’s performance relies on the entire network’s performance:

“You’re talking about the edge. But your edge depending on your industry is only as good as your downstream network,” Horne said. “And that downstream network could be a much higher latency. You’ve got to get closer to where that particular customer has to process that need.”

Read the whole story at Bisnow.