Latency Matters

May 17, 2014

latency

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.

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