CPU Cycle ~ 1 time unit Anything you do at all. The cost of doing business.
CPU Cache Hit ~ 10 time units Something that was located close to something else that was just accessed by either time or location.
Memory Access ~ 100 time units Something that most likely has been accessed recently, but not immediately previously in the code.
Disk Access ~ 1,000,000 time units It's been paged out to disk because it's accessed too infrequently or is too big to fit in memory.
Network Access ~ 100,000,000 time units It's not even here. Damn. Go grab it from that long series of tubes. Roughly about the same amount of time it takes to blink your eye.