How much network latency is "typical" for east - west coast USA?
- by Jeff Atwood
At the moment we're trying to decide whether to move our datacenter from the west coast to the east coast.
However, I am seeing some disturbing latency numbers from my west coast location to the east coast. Here's a sample result, retrieving a small .png logo file in Google Chrome and using the dev tools to see how long the request takes:
West coast to east coast:
215 ms latency, 46 ms transfer time, 261 ms total
West coast to west coast:
114 ms latency, 41 ms transfer time, 155 ms total
It makes sense that Corvallis, OR is geographically closer to my location in Berkeley, CA so I expect the connection to be a bit faster.. but I'm seeing an increase in latency of +100ms when I perform the same test to the NYC server. That seems .. excessive to me. Particularly since the time spent transferring the actual data only increased 10%, yet the latency increased 100%!
That feels... wrong... to me.
I found a few links here that were helpful (through Google no less!) ...
Does routing distance affect performance significantly?
How does geography affect network latency?
Latency in Internet connections from Europe to USA
... but nothing authoritative.
So, is this normal? It doesn't feel normal. What is the "typical" latency I should expect when moving network packets from the east coast <--> west coast of the USA?
