The 500-Mile Email Limit: A Curious Experiment

A humorous tale of a university president unable to send emails beyond 500 miles sparked an experiment into network connectivity and email transmission distance. By writing simple network connection code and testing servers at various universities, the author discovered that actual connection distance is limited by server location and network infrastructure, not physical distance. The experiment ultimately revealed the impact of cloud computing and the geographical distribution of mail servers on email transmission, making the 500-mile limit more of a coincidence than a physical law.