Conversely, Amazon EC2 is always connected to the backbone of the internet where round-trip latency is 5 milliseconds or less to most web sites rather than the 100 milliseconds seen over wireless connections.

ENGADGET: Amazon Silk browser spins a faster mobile web, courtesy of cloud servers (video)

The time taken for this round-trip of request and acknowledgment determines the network's latency.

ECONOMIST: The faster the internet becomes, the slower it loads pages

Latency over wireless connections is high - on the order of 100 milliseconds round trip.

ENGADGET: Amazon Silk browser spins a faster mobile web, courtesy of cloud servers (video)