Latency Matters

I recently tried to move my Linode to Fremont, CA from Atlanta (where it is now). Turns out, latency matters. A lot.

The top cities that access my site (in order) are:

• New York

• London

• Bangalore

• San Francisco

• Chicago

• Sydney

• Toronto

• Los Angeles

• Seattle

Notice that the top three are all coming from the East. So when I moved my site to the west coast I saw load times go up by around 100-200ms from most locations around the world.

So I canceled the migration and am once again hosting out of Atlanta. Hosting from the east coast does have its advantages.

The speed of light: Don’t mess with it.