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We want to have a server with low latency to the service opensea.io.

To find out which hoster is close to their servers we would simply rent a bunch of servers from different hosters and ping the service above.

Do you have any better ideas for this approach?

Thanks

user1000415
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1 Answers1

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We want to have a server [of our own] with low latency to the service opensea. How to find out which hoster is close to their servers.

  1. Contact and reach out to the operator of that specific service

They may be willing to provide that information and might even do better and offer you premium access with even lower latency, fewer usage restrictions etc.

It is not unheard for institutions to be willing to do so.

For example the London Stock Exchange offers co-location for parties that want to have the lowest possible latency to the LSE.

When the operator of that service is not willing to cooperate and provide you with information/low latency access:

  1. you typically look at the IP-addresses the service is using.

In this case that won't help you much: the IP-address that is returned is one owned and operated by the CloudFlare CDN, which hides the actual IP-address of the service.
Note that their usage of a CDN implies that even being in the same datacenter as the actual server, your access will always still be routed to CloudFlare first.

In other cases you may see an IP-address that does allow you to pin down a specific hosting provider and geographical location.

To find out which hoster is close to their servers we would simply rent a bunch of servers from different hosters and ping the service above.

With opensea.io using the CloudFlare CDN you'll find that many places will have a really low ping times, because your ping will be routed to the nearest CloudFlare server...

A simple ping doesn't really tell you anything about the latency between the CloudFlare server and the actual server(s) opensea is running off.

More advanced analyses may allow you to find a way that measures the combined latency of [your server ==> request] <===> via [CloudFlare servers] <====> [opensea back-end] and optimize on that though.

diya
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  • reg 1.) We had tried that before. The operator unfortunately does not offer a colocation service. // reg 2.) Thanks for that info! – user1000415 Jan 28 '23 at 08:07
  • reg 1: It is irrelevant what the operator offers if he cooperates - i.e. the CME offers colocation (REALLY expensive) but there are plenty of datacentres in Chicago.... that have a direct link to the CME (data centre) and below 1ms latency. If in your example the operator is in a data centre, getting as close to him as possible does not mean he has to provide you colocation - just cooperating on fast access by giving you information and you doing some homework to find a good solution. – TomTom Jan 30 '23 at 10:31
  • @TomTom Thanks and make sense! We have contacted the operator. – user1000415 Jan 31 '23 at 07:52