Which location would you choose?

[Mike]

Hey all,

I'm looking to setup a server somewhere and I'm looking for the communities view.

Basically I won't be using a CDN but I want my website to be accessed quickly by everyone in the world.  With that in mind, which server location would you choose and why?  With location I mean like which continent/state etc.

Some people may say in the UK because it's in the center of Europe offering low latency to the US and Europe etc.

What's your thoughts?

Thanks, Mike.

 

[Nett]

Choose a location close to your website visitor's location.

East coast US (NY/NJ) and UK/FR are good locations for US/EU visitors, a eastern EU location would be good for EU/Western Asia visitors, and a Asia location (eg. Singapore/HK/Japan) or western USA location (LAX,SJC,SEA) would be good for visitors from APAC.

 

[Mike]

I'm looking for just one location that provides good latency throughout the world.

 

[Nett]

Use cloudflare.

 

[Mike]

Read the post before replying.

 

[Nett]

I'm looking for just one location that provides good latency throughout the world.

This is impossible unless you get a distributed CDN.

For example, you have a visitor in Asia and another in Europe. If your server is located in EU it would benefit the EU visitor but not the Asia visitor, and vise versa.

 

[Mike]

Anything is possible.  I'm looking for good latency for all visitors without the need of a CDN, I don't need absolute amazing speed for every single visitor, just a location that'll provide good latency for all visitors.

 

[Nett]

Dallas/Chicago.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

No matter what you're going to be in a location that favors another continent over another, so honestly what @Nett said with Cloudflare isn't that bad (unless Cloudflare screws with certain aspects of the site like it did with vpsBoard).  

Honestly give it a shot.  If not and you want international-focus without giving Europe or Asia a priority, Dallas, Texas is probably what you'll want.  It's not great to Asia, but it's not as bad as East Coast USA.  Same for Europe.

From Asia, Dallas (at least Incero for me) is around 170/180 ms on a good day.  East Coast USA is around 200/220ms.  Then my Europe VMs are like 300-400ms.  

Like I said before, those are usually during the good days.  During major congestion time periods it's around 250ms to Dallas (200ms alone to Quadranet).  

 

[Mike]

The main reason I don't want to use CloudFlare is because they charge $20 to use a single SSL.  I have multiple sub-domains that would use SSL and it just doesn't seem worth it to be paying someone roughly $60+ a month just to use SSL.  I have considered using MaxCDN but it's still in the pipeline.

Does it make a difference what location I choose if I were to use, say MaxCDN as a CDN?

Any suggestions on a CDN over MaxCDN?

 

[Nett]

Host html files on a regular server (with SSL) and all css/js/images on the CDN.

But really, the location won't really matter, the latency is counted in milliseconds not seconds and the link speed of your visitor is the thing that really matters.

I see no difference (in speed) visiting google or vpsboard.

 

[Mike]

Host html files on a regular server (with SSL) and all css/js/images on the CDN.

In doing that, wouldn't it produce an SSL warning that some aspects of the page aren't secure?

With MaxCDN, they provide a free shared SSL.

 

[Nett]

In doing that, wouldn't it produce an SSL warning that some aspects of the page aren't secure?

With MaxCDN, they provide a free shared SSL.

As long as both your website and the CDN is secured by SSL, you are fine.

 

[datarealm]

Based off your original post I'd tend to agree with Nett that central US would fare well.  From there you should have similar access to both Europe and Asia.

Using that logic though, I'd probably try to make an educated guess where you expect the majority of your traffic to be and centralize your server in that location.  If you expect more traffic from Europe than the US, it doesn't make sense to locate your server in the middle of the US...

 

[MannDude]

I'd say central USA, then. Chicago or Dallas. Avoid the cheapest of the cheap, but generally speaking it shouldn't be too bad for Asia (for example), shouldn't be too bad for Europe, and other parts of the world, either. It'll be acceptable for most locations, just not optimal for most.

It's the cheese pizza of the pizza party. It's acceptable.

 

[notFound]

You won't find a provider that has good connectivity to every single part of the world, realistically. The UK won't be amazing for Asia although it will be acceptable, but it really depends on the individual provider and how well connected they are.

 

[DomainBop]

Central USA location is the bestest!!!!

Physical distance from Point A to Point B often bears little resemblance to Internet Routing distance from Point A to Point B. 

Three examples:


Milan, Italy to Cairo Egypt: physical distance 2,300 miles. Internet routing distance over 10,000 miles (Milan > Frankfurt > London > New York City > Cairo)


Santiago, Chile to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: physical distance 2,300 miles.  Internet routing distance almost 9,000 miles (Chile > Miami, USA > Brazil)


Asia Country A to nearby Asia Country B: physical distance a few hundred miles.  Internet routing distance over 14,000 miles Point A > Los Angeles > Point B

tl;dr there is no ideal location for your "website to be accessed quickly by everyone in the world"

just a location that'll provide good latency for all visitors.

See the examples above.  We're probably 15-20 years away from the time when global infrastructure will have improved enough that using just one location will be able to provide good latency to all visitors.

$60+ a month just to use SSL

If the $60 is a concern then you probably don't have the traffic yet to justify the added expense of paying for a CDN because the cost to benefit ratio will still be negative at this point even if you use the cheapest MaxCDN or paid CloudFlare CDN plan.  Lower cost CDN's tend to be a waste of money for smaller websites because the $$ value of  the benefits they provide is negligible at low traffic levels (and many of the free and cheaper CDN's suffer from performance and stability problems and end up doing more harm than good).

Max CDN alternatives

I use Level 3 CDN via CloudVPS.  93 global pops.  (CloudVPS also offer a free version but you have to pay if you want the SSL version http://www.cloudvps.com/openstack/cdn-acceleration ...SSL version is not cheap)

 

[jvkz]

Out favorite location are France and Netherlands because both locations have good ping from asia/middle east and usa.

 

[W3Space]

You can go with eu location, but you should go with a cdn, that will boost your site. cloudflare is nice option. its free to..

 

[drmike]

Yeah, there is no center of the internet.   Even playing the US central corridor game is highly flawed.  Routes in the US are utter garbage and vary greatly depending on upstream.

This is scenario CDN was created to address.   BUT! Depends on nature of your content.   If you are average small site, a CDN is useless moreless and performance of CDN often is blah for web stuff.  If you are pushing video and big downloads, well CDN or bunch of end nodes sprinkled that you control with a GEODNS top layer on DNS.

Biggest thing you can do to improve generally and this applies to everyone, is stop using dynamic generated app data.  90% of people just don't need the slow experience of PHP or other app layer generating pages.

Rip pages to flat files.  Enable proper caching.. Have lots of pages (thousands) then do this and shove it up to CDN + cache.  Has downsides (losing tracking per se depending on what company/CDN serves the docs).

All that said, playing along purely for OP's entertainment:

Los Angeles, California

Chicago, Illinois

New York metro

London or Amsterdam

Hong Kong

That's where I'd start.  1 won't cut it.  But playing along again, Amsterdam.