Specifically, suppose I am working on a web-based application on a server located in 2000 kilometers away. Ping averages 75ms round trip.
Could I reasonably expect to notice any difference at all if I moved the application to another web host located in the same city, with <30ms ping? (Or a truly local server with <1ms ping?)
Maybe a stupid question, and the answer is as simple as my best guess: “You stand to save about one twentieth of a second between clicks, which is insignificant compared with the bottleneck of the available CPU cycles on the server side.” …but I’m curious.
That. Whatever your application is doing on the backend will probably take long enough to make a 45ms difference in average ping time meaningless. An exception is if your application serves only small, static files, in which case it can make a difference.
For any other kind of application, the difference only becomes relevant when dealing with rather large levels of traffic, at which point you’ll be load balancing across different data centers, anyway.
