Hi Guys,

Im looking to buy some servers soon and I like what I see with the planets 2800s series. For the price/network/bandwidth/SLA you can't seem to go wrong but...

I am in the UK and I will re running some big bandwidth on these servers. Nowhere in the UK can compete on price or bandwidth but my issue is latency and response.

Would a "normal" http page be that much slower to be noticable if it where based in the states rather than the UK?

Have any UK'ers had any experience of how much of a difference this all makes?

TCP speed is affected by latency, so lets take a traceroute from an example site:

From my system in NYC:
traceroute to hopper.uk6x.com (213.121.24.91), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 vlan36.nyc1.crnc.net (69.9.37.193) 0.244 ms 0.210 ms 0.189 ms
2 0548.fa5-48.msfc1.nyc.nac.net (64.21.47.101) 0.420 ms 0.453 ms 0.443 ms
3 94.ge-3-0-0.gbr2.nyc.nac.net (64.21.102.13) 0.404 ms 3.088 ms 0.516 ms
4 0.so-0-3-0.gbr1.ltn.nac.net (209.123.11.210) 68.750 ms 68.837 ms 69.000 ms
5 linx1.ukcore.bt.net (195.66.224.10) 68.909 ms 69.039 ms 68.865 ms
6 eris.bt.net (194.73.82.244) 69.186 ms * 69.157 ms

From a machine at theplanet:
traceroute to 194.73.82.244 (194.73.82.244), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 97.67-18-146.reverse.theplanet.com (67.18.146.97) 0.696 ms 0.664 ms 0.582 ms
2 18.67-18-144.reverse.theplanet.com (67.18.144.18) 0.531 ms 0.792 ms 0.658 ms
3 ibr1-ge-1-0-0-v2.dllstx3.theplanet.com (12.96.160.33) 0.684 ms 1.249 ms 0.800 ms
4 gw-cr2.dfw2.us.above.net (216.200.6.233) 1.210 ms 0.886 ms 0.802 ms
5 so-3-0-0.cr2.dfw2.us.above.net (64.125.28.217) 1.014 ms 0.935 ms 0.982 ms
6 so-5-3-0.cr2.dca2.us.above.net (64.125.28.69) 29.031 ms 29.395 ms 29.152 ms
7 so-0-0-0.cr1.dca2.us.above.net (64.125.29.121) 29.196 ms 29.195 ms 29.163 ms
8 so-6-0-0.cr1.lhr3.uk.above.net (64.125.31.185) 100.793 ms 101.170 ms 100.925 ms
9 pos2-0.mpr1.lhr1.uk.above.net (208.184.231.177) 100.913 ms 100.835 ms 101.023 ms
10 pos4-0.mpr2.lhr1.uk.above.net (208.185.156.14) 100.917 ms 101.010 ms 100.989 ms
11 core2-gig9-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net (208.185.156.218) 101.008 ms 101.092 ms 101.402 ms
12 core1-gig1-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net (195.99.125.149) 100.975 ms 100.976 ms 100.937 ms
13 eris.bt.net (194.73.82.244) 101.597 ms * 101.707 ms

So there is around a +30 ms latency increase from DFW versus the east coast, but this shouldn't decrease speed that badly.
Hope this helps,
Phrost

Location doesn't really affect anything but speed to you. You are going to have people everywhere visiting the server.... so if you ask me... location of the datacenter doesn't matter. What datacenter you choose is what really matters.

Originally posted by StueyB

Would a "normal" http page be that much slower to be noticable if it where based in the states rather than the UK?

You will notice a tiny difference when loading a site which is in the US instead of UK, but that difference would just be tiny with a 'normal' http page, 5 seconds to load instead of 3? not such a big deal..

You mentioned you will use high bandwidth amounts but didn't mention what it will be used for. if its something ping sensitive like gaming you should really try to get as close to home as possible, maybe east coast. but if its just downloading files, you should be able to reach your isp's maximum download cap from theplanet.
You could always ask them for a speedtest file.