Bitcoin Forum

Is there any relationship between global Internet speeds and transaction confirmation time?

For example, if a whole host of third-world countries relying on dial-up infrastructure suddenly decided to jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon, would the confirmation time slow down to a crawl since it would take more time for a transaction to be broadcast over the network?

And if Internet speeds become faster in the future due to emerging technologies like VDSL, then will the transaction confirmation time speed up?

nope. The transaction sizes are very small. Even dial up would be lightning fast for the transaction sizes.

Confirmation and network propagation are completely different things.

The rate at which transactions are confirmed is a function of total network hashrate versus current difficulty, which is retargeted to try to achieve a 10 min/block average.

Network propagation of a given transaction is a function of the number and connectivity of nodes.

I have no trouble sending bitcoins using 3G in Kenya

Because tx sizes are rather small you'd simply need to broadcast that transaction and even with crappy internet I doubt it would take very long to send < 1kB no matter where you are. Once broadcast provided your tx has enough priority it should be included in the next block - to put it simply internet speed has no bearing on confirmation times.

Nice to see there are people from Kenya. I really liked Maurice Odumbe. Sorry for being off topic ;)

There are people from worldwide, why especially kenya?