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Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

calpaterson.com

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#71
post #8

Shameless plug: https://fly.io We built Fly _specifically_ so you can run servers close to your users. We do a lot for you on the network side, too, like terminate TLS in all our regions. One thing to note, though, is that latencies between cities are surprisingly different than their theoretical max. We have apps on Fly with lots of South American users. It's frequently faster for people in Argentina to connect to M…

I'm intrigued. Do you own datacenters or piggybacking of some existing infra?

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#72
post #39
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But now I manage servers all over the world, and it's impossible to see them physically, even the ones that are hosted nearby." Did you know that we have "drive up" access ? If your account is in San Diego, you can just drive up to the datacenter and connect to our Ubiquiti LR AP. No Internet required. We had it deployed in Denver as well but we moved datacenters a few years ago and are in a tall high rise[1] with d…

Any capacity to plug in an good old-fashioned Ethernet cable?

Well, yes and no ...

Of course we have switches in our racks and of course we could find a way to plug you in ...

However, there would be a lot of administrative overhead just to get you inside the datacenter in question, not to mention how we would clear you and your equipment, etc.

We regularly accept bare SATA drives as ingress and we support that process in reverse - most likely we would steer you towards that route ...

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#73
post #35
post #8

Shameless plug: https://fly.io We built Fly _specifically_ so you can run servers close to your users. We do a lot for you on the network side, too, like terminate TLS in all our regions. One thing to note, though, is that latencies between cities are surprisingly different than their theoretical max. We have apps on Fly with lots of South American users. It's frequently faster for people in Argentina to connect to M…

The applications I work on do several database calls for single user HTTP request. Shouldn't the application server be as close as possible to the database, rather than to the user? I struggle to think of an example where your model is useful, unless your application has no database.

Assuming you can't get your database close to your users. It depends on the data dependencies between your database calls. If they're independent, and you do them in parallel, you can do pretty well with a frontend near your user, parallel queries to backends wherever.

If your queries have data dependencies, you'd get better results with a front end near your users, and a middle tier api near your database.

But, just TCP (or TLS) termination near your users and the real frontend near your database can make a surprising amount of difference.

On the other hand. There's a lot you can do to make sure things are fast from limited locations. Keep an eye on data size, make sure you're monitoring for and fixing slow queries, optimize your images, etc. If your html takes seconds to serve, it barely matters where you served it from.

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#74
post #53

As a not-currently-webdev, it seems to me like making a good website, on a technical level, is closer to an engineering trade-space (as opposed to "just do it better") than I had thought. Splitting static content into smaller files allows for better cache utilization, but increases page load times due to higher latency when those items aren't cached. Bundling content reduces roundtrip penalties (latency, various per-…

> The only way that you can "win" appears to be by making your content as static and as simple as possible.

Please.

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#75
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cloud ruined that fringe benefit, I used to manage servers in London and got to visit them quarterly. But now I manage servers all over the world, and it's impossible to see them physically, even the ones that are hosted nearby. Though all things considered, I don't really miss sitting inside a cold, loud datacenter or standing in front of a tiny KVM monitor for hours just to load CD's to do a software upgrade.

I annoyed my family by chiming in during The Martian about Donald Glover freezing his ass off in the server room: He doesn't have to be cold! If he moved over one aisle he'd be nice and toasty! Last time I was having to go into a server room, hot and cold aisles were still a new thing, so it was just cold everywhere.

Donald, Danny is his uncle

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#76
post #8

Shameless plug: https://fly.io We built Fly _specifically_ so you can run servers close to your users. We do a lot for you on the network side, too, like terminate TLS in all our regions. One thing to note, though, is that latencies between cities are surprisingly different than their theoretical max. We have apps on Fly with lots of South American users. It's frequently faster for people in Argentina to connect to M…

I'm intrigued. Do you own datacenters or piggybacking of some existing infra?

We have dedicated hardware in a bunch of facilities, either leased or colo.

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#77
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cloud ruined that fringe benefit, I used to manage servers in London and got to visit them quarterly. But now I manage servers all over the world, and it's impossible to see them physically, even the ones that are hosted nearby. Though all things considered, I don't really miss sitting inside a cold, loud datacenter or standing in front of a tiny KVM monitor for hours just to load CD's to do a software upgrade.

"But now I manage servers all over the world, and it's impossible to see them physically, even the ones that are hosted nearby." Did you know that we have "drive up" access ? If your account is in San Diego, you can just drive up to the datacenter and connect to our Ubiquiti LR AP. No Internet required. We had it deployed in Denver as well but we moved datacenters a few years ago and are in a tall high rise[1] with d…

I imagined when reading "tall high rise" that you were in DG&E. I'm not sure where you were at or if you are looking for something else, but we've long been in "Fortrust", now "Iron Mountain" which is north of downtown. In the past they've been very easy to work with, including at one point I used to have a dark fiber that ran from one of my cabinets to DG&E's meet me, where we used it to connect to Level-3. I know some of their customers have antennas on the outside of the building, though I don't believe I'm supposed to know why so I won't go into details. :-) They have plenty of parking, might be worth investigating.

DG&E is a weird and wonderful building. Used to have a client that had a suite in there. For those unaware, it is an old, old building, right next to the building that houses the Denver main telco switch. It was built over a hundred years ago, and has been Denver's largest (? maybe that info is out of date) meet-me room for Internet providers. Being such an old building, you can imagine it has all sorts of problems retrofitting modern requirements for cabling and power generation/backup.

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#78
post #12

Many years ago (2006 and 2009, respectively) I had to choose European and Asian locations for rsync.net storage arrays. My primary, overriding criteria in choosing locations was what would be the coolest, most interesting place to visit for installs and maintenance . I chose Zurich and Hong Kong. Measured results have exceeded my initial models.

I’ve nothing against Switzerland (it’s nice) but you’re the first person I’ve ever come across to suggest Zurich (or anywhere in Switzerland) as the coolest and most interesting place in Europe! I’m genuinely interested to hear more.

In addition to skiing, Switzerland's fantastic public transit gives you a huge array of options. My favourite day for guests is:

- Train to Arth Goldau, optionally visit the zoo there

- Train to Rigi Kulm (literally the top of a mountain, with some beautiful views)

- Cable car or cogwheel railway to a ferry terminal on the Vierwaldstättersee

- Ferry across the Vierwaldstättersee to Luzern

- Train from Luzern back to Zürich HB

If you have a resident buy you a day pass in advance, all of this costs 44 CHF ($44).

There's really a lot to do though. You can do a day trip to pretty much anywhere in Switzerland. I've done it to Geneva a couple of times, also to towns out in the boonies.

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#79
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so you're only 13% slower than the theoretical max. Yes. Not to mention those Fibre aren't exactly a straight line. There is extra distance for layering the fibre route. 13% is very close to practical maximum. That is why I asked [1] if we have Hollow Core Cable [2] soon where we get close to Real speed of light. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26026002 [2] https://www.laserfocusworld.com/fiber-optics/artic…

That sounds awesome. I would love to see lower latencies. Do you know if anyone's considering these for consumer Internet?

At the moment they are nowhere close to being ready for wide deployment or large scale commercial drawing (try to find some videos of modern fibre drawing the speed is absolutely insane).

Obviously the HFT crowd are very interested in these, but they are willing to pay the premiums. Also the next area is probably datacentres where latency is very important as well, and these fibres already provide similar losses to multi-mode fibres at ~900 nm wavelengths.

Re: Where's the fastest place to put my server? How much does it matter?

#80
post #75
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I annoyed my family by chiming in during The Martian about Donald Glover freezing his ass off in the server room: He doesn't have to be cold! If he moved over one aisle he'd be nice and toasty! Last time I was having to go into a server room, hot and cold aisles were still a new thing, so it was just cold everywhere.

Donald, Danny is his uncle

Goddamnit. I had it right and outsmarted myself.
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