Web server locations
The physical location of the server that your website is hosted on is a factor in how fast your pages and other files download for site visitors. People using shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated servers, or colocation usually consider server location when deciding where to host their sites.
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Where site visitors are
Some websites target a specific geographical market, while others have global appeal. Even with the latter type, there is still one country or continent where more site visitors are located than other locations.
Ideally, your site will download fast for site visitors everywhere. If there is a difference in download speed depending on location, keep the geographical area with the most site visitors in mind when deciding on server location.
Connectivity from where site visitors are
Most of the time, differences between download speeds for site visitors in different parts of the world are less than a second. It may be more in these situations:
- The site has very large files, such as images.
- The site visitors are a high number of hops (see below) away from the server.
- The server is used for online games.
Fast connectivity times improve download speed. These measurements are often used to determine connectivity times:
- Pings are messages sent to the server to receive a message back indicating how long it took to reach that server. The lower the ping time, the better. There are differing opinions on how much ping time correlates with download speed from different locations.
- Hops are the transition points the data makes to get from the server to site visitors. When there is good connectivity between the server and site visitors, the number of hops is lower. Fewer hops means that the download speed can be faster than if site visitors were physically closer to the server but with more hops between them and the server.
For any location, download speed can be improved by optimizing web pages and images and having the site on a server that isn't overloaded.
Bandwidth
Some people consider the number and quality of bandwidth carriers a web host has more important than server location. If a web host has only one upstream provider, for example, download speed will be affected no matter where the server is located.
Web hosting cost
Web hosting costs vary depending on the country and the services provided because of prices for electricity, bandwidth, and other expenses. The geographical location that you determine would be the best for your website could have more expensive web hosting options than other locations. Cost and location need to be weighed against each other.
Web hosting providers
In addition to fast download speed for your site visitors, you want a web hosting provider that has pricing and packages that suit you as well as customer support that works for you. If you want phone support in your time zone or support in a specific language, for example, you'll have fewer options to choose from. These factors might be more important than differences in download speed.
See also
Web Hosting Wiki article text shared under a Creative Commons License.
