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I have some servers in France and in Hong Kong. Ping is quick to google.com, < 10ms in france, and < 30ms in HK.

But ping between these servers is greater than 250ms. This is very slow and very unconfortable, even when I'm on ssh.

Does anyone known any tips to reduce ping between remote locations (VPN, tunnel over a priority port...) ?

Xorax
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    The reason the pings to google.com are low from both servers is because Google has multiple datacenters and servers all over the world, and each of your servers is actually pinging the google.com server closest to themselves. – KJ-SRS Nov 29 '11 at 17:39
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    traceroute from one to the other. Add that in to the question, and it might be that the traffic between them is going via the US instead of via India. Then we can see what the problem is. – Aaron Nov 29 '11 at 17:56
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    One caution here, do not take ping as an absolute indicator as to how fast things are running between two sites. What I have seen is that ping processing is not necessarily treated as a priority situation and thus your numbers might be actually overestimating the time. – mdpc Nov 29 '11 at 17:42

2 Answers2

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Aside from increasing the speed of light?

Google isn't a good measure of network speed. The response times that you're seeing indicate clearly that you're hitting Google servers in the same country (or at least on the same continent) from both locations.

Routing to the other side of the world isn't a simple affair - start with a traceroute between the locations and see where the delay is occurring. If a specific router or path is introducing unnecessary delay, your provider may be able to avoid it.

MDMarra
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Shane Madden
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  • However when I phone over a VOIP server from HK to France, there is no latency. So I suppose there are priority ports or protocols. – Xorax Nov 29 '11 at 17:51
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    This statement defies logic. There is latency, by definition. It's on the order of probably 100ms, if not more (depending on how it actually gets there Now, there might be *noticeable* latency, but that is a completely different subject. – Aaron Nov 29 '11 at 17:55
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    Speed of light round trip time between Paris and Hong Kong is about 70 milliseconds. – Russell Borogove Nov 29 '11 at 18:48
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    `Ye cannae change the laws o' physics!` (When you try bad things happen. You really don't want a bunch of upset physicists on your doorstep.) – voretaq7 Nov 29 '11 at 19:27
  • The laws of physics be a harsh mistress. – Shane Madden Nov 29 '11 at 19:34
  • @RussellBorogove In what medium? Fiber optical cables are not vacuums. – David Schwartz Nov 29 '11 at 20:23
  • @DavidSchwartz in vacuum. Call it 100ms for a (politically-unlikely) great circle path in fiber from Paris to HK. – Russell Borogove Nov 29 '11 at 22:37
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You'll have to request one of your service provider to route your traffic to given destination at a shortest path. This way latency can be reduced.

i.e France 1.1.1.1 and HK 2.2.2.2 . request your HK service provider to route 1.1.1.1 at shortest path or vise versa at France service provider.

User4283
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    This isn't a bad answer, in practice, but just telling them "make it better" isn't generally helpful - they usually do try to make things better and generally pick the best route available. – Aaron Nov 29 '11 at 18:01
  • This is a correct answer! Though not helpful for an end user. – mailq Nov 30 '11 at 00:51