How to Choose a VPS Location: Distance, Users and Real Tests
10gpsvps ·
Host your server close to the people who use it, and check that by measuring from where they are. Your own location matters only if you are one of those users. Distance gives you a starting point, and a test from your users' side tells you more.
Distance sets a floor
Light travels at 299,792,458 metres per second in a vacuum (NIST). In optical fiber it covers about 200,000 km per second, around two-thirds of that speed, according to High Performance Browser Networking.
That gives a rule of thumb. Light in fiber takes about 5 microseconds per km one way, so a round trip costs about 1 ms per 100 km of fiber, or 10 ms per 1,000 km.
| Fiber distance | Round-trip floor |
|---|---|
| 100 km | 1 ms |
| 1,000 km | 10 ms |
| 5,000 km | 50 ms |
| 10,000 km | 100 ms |
Read this as a physical minimum. It is not the latency of any location here, and it is not a measured result for this service. Real cables do not run in straight lines, and every hop adds time. The same book puts New York to Sydney at 160 ms round trip in theory and says real networks see 200 to 300 ms.
Why a few milliseconds add up
One visit costs more than one round trip. Opening a new HTTPS connection takes about three: one for TCP, one for TLS 1.3, and one for the request and its reply. On a 100 ms round trip, that is about 300 ms before the first byte arrives. Each extra connection pays that again, and each call in a chain of API calls adds at least one more round trip.
Some work depends on this more than others. A shell session, a game server or an API that makes many small calls depends on round-trip time. A large download or a nightly backup depends on it much less, although a long route does limit a single connection, as the port guide explains.
Find where your users are
If you already run a site, your web server logs or your own stats can show the top countries. If you are starting out, write down the country you plan to sell to first. Pick the location for the largest group whose work depends on round-trip time, not for the average of all of them.
Measure from there
A ping from your laptop tells you about your laptop. If your users are in Germany and you are not, ask someone there to run the test, or run it from a machine you already have in that country. A home or mobile line adds delay of its own, so use one like your users have.
Leaseweb's public test servers give you something to measure against. This loop pings all 8 and prints a summary line for each. It works on Linux and macOS:
for host in \
speedtest.ams1.nl.leaseweb.net \
speedtest.fra1.de.leaseweb.net \
speedtest.lon1.uk.leaseweb.net \
speedtest.lax12.us.leaseweb.net \
speedtest.sfo12.us.leaseweb.net \
speedtest.wdc2.us.leaseweb.net \
speedtest.sin1.sg.leaseweb.net
do
echo "$host"
ping -c 20 -q "$host" | tail -1
doneThe summary line shows the minimum, average and maximum round trip. The minimum is the closest you get to the route's floor. A large gap between minimum and maximum means the path is unsteady. Compare the locations with each other and make a short list of two or three.
These figures show the path to Leaseweb's test server, not to a customer's VPS, and they promise nothing about one. Singapore's test server is in SIN-01, a different building from SIN-12, where the VPS runs. To test the short list further, with downloads and iperf3, use the network test guide.
The 7 locations by audience
This table is a starting point from geography alone, so check it against your own tests. Prices and traffic are for VPS 1, with prices on the monthly term.
| Location | Nearest audience | VPS 1, traffic |
|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam Haarlem, near Amsterdam AMS-01 | The Netherlands, Belgium and Western Europe. | $8.99 30 TB |
| Frankfurt Frankfurt FRA-01 | Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Central Europe. | $8.99 30 TB |
| London Slough, near London LON-01 | The UK and Ireland. | $10.99 30 TB |
| Los Angeles Los Angeles LAX-12 | Southern California and the US Southwest. | $10.99 30 TB |
| San Francisco San Jose, in the Bay Area SFO-12 | Northern California, the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada. | $10.99 30 TB |
| Washington Manassas, Virginia WDC-02 | The US East Coast and Eastern Canada. Of the three US sites, it is the closest to Europe. | $10.99 30 TB |
| Singapore Singapore SIN-12 | Southeast Asia. It is also the nearest of the 8 to India and East Asia, though those are long routes. | $12.99 30 TB |
None of the 8 is in South America, Africa or the Middle East. If your users are there, the nearest location by map may not be the nearest by route, so test several.
What else can decide it
Price. Prices differ by location because Leaseweb's own costs differ. VPS 1 runs from $8.99 to $12.99 a month across the 8. See the plans page for each plan in each location.
Traffic. Every location includes 30 TB a month. If you send a lot of data, read the traffic guide first.
The real address. Some location names cover a wider area. The San Francisco data center is in San Jose and the Washington one is in Manassas, Virginia. The table lists the real town for all 8.
Rules you have to follow. If a contract or a law says which country your data must stay in, that comes before everything above.
Users on two continents. One server has to favour one side. Put it near the group that makes the most round trips, or run a server in each place.
