Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?
Minor note---you can get much tighter theoretical minimum latencies than the ones listed in your table.<p>1. The table's mins divide straight line distance by the speed of light.  This gives you the time it takes for light to travel in a straight line from, say, London to New York.  However, your "real latencies" are roundtrip ("ping") latencies.  Thus, you need to multiply all the theoretical latencies by two.<p>2. Data does not travel through a fiber optic cable at the speed of light.  This is because light actually bends around the cable when transmitted.  These are called cosine losses, and mean the light travels roughly 5/3 the actual cable distance.  So, multiply again by 5/3.  (This is why HFT firms use microwave links for long distances.)<p>If you multiply the theoretical maxes by 3.33, you'll see that they're very close to the actual latencies you're observing.  New York -> London becomes 62.7 ms optimal, so you're only 13% slower than the theoretical max.<p>Here on the west coast, I typically see within 10% of the theoretical min for data going over the Seattle -> Japan submarine cables.