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T.J. Crowder
Asked: 2009-10-06 03:08:21 +0800 CST

Should I worry about the speed trans-atlantic web access for my users?

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Obviously it's just one factor in the mix, but if I host a site here in the UK knowing that the majority of my users are in the U.S., how much weight should I give concerns about access speed for those users? (Currently ~70% U.S. users, ~20% UK, remainder are all over.) Trans-Atlantic hops used to be a bit of a big deal, but is it really much of a factor in today's world?

Again, I recognise this is only one factor in the overall mix, just looking to see how much weight the community thinks I should give it.

(Before you suggest it, using one of the big CDNs/clouds -- Amazon s3+ec2, Google AppEngine, etc. -- isn't an option at the moment.)

EDIT: All answers welcome; any stories of direct experience with this would be especially helpful.

network-speed

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    There used to be significant issues with both latency and throughput with transatlantic links. These days though the bandwidth available (assuming your ISP/host has decent peering arrangements) is such that throughput isn't really an issue in most cases.

    Latency can still be an issue, but only if your application is particularly latency sensitive. For instance the small-packet round-trip time (i.e. a standard ping request) between my home machines (online via a good ADSL ISP) and the server I have state-side (as it tends to be cheaper there) is usually around 100ms (sometimes it sits at something approaching 120 for a time). For the vast majority of web-based services this level of latency is not going to be an issue at all.

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  2. I wouldn't give it much weight... US/UK isn't a huge hop. Even trans-pacific isn't a deal-breaker, as long as the endpoint network your on isn't congested. A solid network provider is far more important than exactly where you're located, in terms of providing a good experience to the users of the site.

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  3. Are they complaining it's slow? What's your out-bound speed?

    You might consider setting up a squid proxy/cache server in the US, or replicating your site to a server in the US, if it's really a major issue.

    But I wouldn't [personally] expect it to matter that much.

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  4. As other have mentioned the latency issue could be a factor. We have had issues with a CRM and SharePoint on links with latency of less than 100Ms due to the fact that the applications are very "chatty" and make many trips when opening pages. Most sites we fairly local to us in North America. WAN accelerators at the sites stoppe dthe calls and performance is good now and we did not have to obtain faster connections from the providers.

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  5. Latency is an issue. Pageloads will feel sluggish on the fastest connections. Make sure you've got good connectivity in the USA and good pings across the US. It helps if you are located in Chicago, New York, or California data centers. Chicago or New York being preferable if your customers are NOT in Asia. Run traceroutes. That really helps in choosing a webhost. Traceroute to last.fm (a european host) and google.com.

    Choose an ISP in London UK if you need fastest connection in the States.

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