Both capacity and latency are crucial performance metrics for the optimal operation of most networking services and applications, from online gaming to futuristic holographic-type communications. Networks worldwide have witnessed important breakthroughs in terms of capacity, including fibre introduction everywhere, new radio technologies and faster core networks. However, the impact of these capacity upgrades on end-to-end delay is not straightforward as traffic has also grown exponentially. This article overviews the current status of end-to-end latency on different regions and continents worldwide and how far these are from the theoretical minimum baseline, given by the speed of light propagation over an optical fibre. We observe that the trend in the last decade goes toward latency reduction (in spite of the ever-increasing annual traffic growth), but still there are important differences between countries.

翻译：容量和延迟是大多数网络服务和应用（从在线游戏到未来全息通信）优化运行的关键性能指标。全球网络在容量方面取得了重大突破，包括光纤的广泛部署、新型无线电技术以及更快的核心网络。然而，这些容量升级对端到端延迟的影响并非显而易见，因为流量也呈指数级增长。本文概述了全球不同地区和大洲的端到端延迟现状，并分析了它们与理论最小基线（由光在光纤中的传播速度决定）之间的差距。我们观察到，过去十年间，尽管年度流量不断增长，但延迟呈下降趋势，然而各国之间仍存在显著差异。