Server location; speed delay?

Kevin

Senior Member
I understand that if a server is located in the US, that people from Europe may have a delay. I've been told that the delay depends on how well your internet provider is connected to that country rather than the actual distance.

Anyhow, there is most likely a speed delay. I want to know if this is a noticeable difference or if it's just a matter of milliseconds?
 
depends on time of day, location, transit route to server, the server, the number of people connected to the server, the type and throughput of the connection of the server, the connection you are on etc.

Realistically though, you probably won't notice it being hosted in america compared with being hosted in your own country.
 
I'd say it depends more on the speed of the servers with the company, that's more of an important factor in my experience. Hosting in your own country, or in the country that the site is aimed is arguably better for SEO purposes.
 
lol agreeing with Greg there.

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.>>> Realistically though, you probably won't notice it being hosted in america compared with being hosted in your own country.

Please explain?
 
The server location will play a part in the speed. Think of it this way. Take two servers, one in the US and one in the UK both same spec, same connection to the router, same performance.

The US server will be slightly slower simply because the signal has further to travel. Granted it will be milliseconds but when you are uploading files or users are streaming content from your site, but these milliseconds do add up.

There is the SEO aspect to consider and it does involve fannying on with Google webmaster tools to make sure the IP address is allocated to the correct results but tbh it's easier to just host in the UK to kick off with.

My rule of thumb is that you should host in the country you are targeting.
 
Agreed, when I first kicked off my portfolio site I had a small reseller setup with an American company, at the time I thought the speed was pretty good, having since moved to a UK host I've noticed the difference, now whether that was just down to their individual server performance I don't know, the other thing to consider with using an international host is the support, factor in expensive phone calls (if they have a phone line for support) and time delays/differences for a support ticket system, those delays could be expensive in the long run!
 
glenwheeler said:
.>>> Realistically though, you probably won't notice it being hosted in america compared with being hosted in your own country.

Please explain?
As there are so many other factors which can cause the loading of a webpage to be fast or slow the likelihood of someone even questioning an extra second of waiting (exaggerated) is unlikely. Most 'news' servers I have connected to limit to around 2MBit connections anyways meaning even having a 20MBit or faster internet will have no affect on the speed at which you receive the website.

Another thing to consider is that a us server is likely to have less people on it during our working hours (9-5) as America is mostly asleep, we are then limited by our own contention over the atlantic, which is still there even at night due to gamers etc. If it's hosted in the UK you have all the work traffic also contesting for a restricted amount of bandwidth during the same time.

Unless a server starts having multiple lan ports or fibre optics theres only so much bandwidth available from a server anyways.

That's why I say it's pretty much irrelevent which country it's hosted in these days, the UK especially is pretty much at it's limit of available bandwidth due to cheapskake isp's na BT not having an infrastructure capable of the 'always on' internet life we are now asking of it - hence them wanting an extra £6+ a year for their planned upgrades (20meg is not an upgrade it's bare minimum!!, Japan and Korea are 100+ already).

@ Openmind, it could work out different depending on where the isp and server are based. If the isp is based in london and the server is say in scotland then it could be quicker to go to a US server as the connection to the US is based in London, meaning it's closer to the US connection than the Scottish one, especially as the UK infrastructure is slow in places due to the shared capacity of UK dslams.
 
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