I get the impression that you think "still subject to the speed of light" is some kind of hyperbole or something, like if you were on a freeway and saw a sign that said "end speed limit" and thought to yourself "welp, still can't go faster than c".
But when you're working on distributed systems that span the planet (say multi-master setups where ~every region can read and even write with low latency), you start thinking of the distance between your datacenters not in miles or kilometers but in milliseconds. The east coast and west coast of the US are at least 14 milliseconds apart:
% units "2680 miles" "c ms"
2680 miles = 14.386759 c ms
and that's not counting non-optimal routing, switching delays, or the speed of light in fiber (only 70% of c). Half of the circumference of the earth (~12500 miles) is likewise 67 milliseconds away absolute best case (unless you can somehow make fiber go through the earth).
But when you're working on distributed systems that span the planet (say multi-master setups where ~every region can read and even write with low latency), you start thinking of the distance between your datacenters not in miles or kilometers but in milliseconds. The east coast and west coast of the US are at least 14 milliseconds apart:
and that's not counting non-optimal routing, switching delays, or the speed of light in fiber (only 70% of c). Half of the circumference of the earth (~12500 miles) is likewise 67 milliseconds away absolute best case (unless you can somehow make fiber go through the earth).