Experiment Overview: Difference between revisions
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Latest revision as of 17:58, 24 December 2024
Introduction[edit | edit source]
Measuring the speed of light in an ethernet cable is a very minimal experiment. The required materials consist of a few different lengths of ethernet cable (category-5 preferred), two computers, and the HpcBench tool (or any other ping tool).
The basics behind the experiment starts with sending data over an ethernet cable. Having the ability to accurately measure the time it takes for the data packet to be sent and received will be key in this process. HpcBench claims to be accurate to the nanosecond.
The ability to measure a speed only requires a length and a time. Knowing the lengths of the ethernet cables and the times measured by HpcBench it is possible plot these values and calculate the slope of the line of best fit. Based on the basic properties of a cat-5 ethernet cable the slope is expected to be around 2/3 the speed of light.