Server location matters less than you think

Wesh everyone. So I moved my blog to Vultr singapore region because "asia pacific growth incha'allah" and honestly... le server حلو, works fine. I am in marseille. My users are everywhere. With cloudflare in front, who cares if origin is SG or FR or US ?

I see people here obsessing over "must be in Frankfurt for EU users" or "tokyo for APAC". Bro. The CDN edge is incha'allah doing the work. Your origin could be on the moon if the cache hit ratio is good. The location fetish is outdated, wesh.

My setup : static site, cloudflare, singapore origin. Loads in 0.8s from paris. 0.9s from montreal. 1.1s from lagos. Prove me wrong. Location is a meme for most use cases.

Moebig you are missing the edge case where it matters!

For dynamic workloads — game servers, real-time collab, financial tick data — you want that Ampere core as close to users as possible! Insane value from ARM at the edge, runs circles around x86 on watts.

I ran YABS (https://github.com/masonr/yet-another-bench-script) on:
- CloudCone Los Angeles: 18423 multi-core
- Same plan in Los Angeles: 18201 multi-core

But latency? 12ms vs 147ms! For my use case that is everything! Cache does nothing for WebSocket streams!

What I've learned about global deployment strategy:

- Cache hit ratio varies by content type
- Dynamic applications require origin proximity
- Compliance frameworks may mandate data residency

Hetzner operates 6 regions with sub-50ms targets to major population centers Location is not decorative infrastructure.

I've been a customer for a couple of years, mostly Falkenstein and Nuremberg.

Moebig
You tested from paris
Montreal
Lagos
But did you test from
Singapore itself
Probably fast
But jakarta
Probably slow
Because peering
Or manila
Especially manila
The cdn has to reach the cdn
Before it helps anyone
Tabs dont lie
Spaces are for css

Ok but heres the thing I had a client once put everything on a "global cdn" but the origin was in sydney and their database queries were like 800ms because nobody caches mysql haha so the site felt fast for static stuff but any login or cart action was painful they moved to Frankfurt eventually and it was fine location definitely matters for the uncacheable stuff but youre not wrong that people overthink it for blogs

Location is a feeling & a number & a dream. I host my poetry site on a vps in helsinki because I like the word. Helsinki. The cold. The dark. The server hums in a language I dont speak. My readers are in buenos aires & they wait. Waiting is also a kind of location. Distance makes the heart. Something. Cache cant fix loneliness. Maybe thats the real latency.

# yabs.sh on moebig's "global" site via VPN exit in Jakarta
CPU: N/A (cloudflare edge)
Disk: N/A
Network:
  Vultr Singapore: 8.2s TTFB, 2.1MB page
  Same site via Frankfurt proxy: 0.8s TTFB

Decent theory, meh execution. Your singapore origin is getting hammered on cache miss. 8 seconds is not a meme, its a timeout.

1) check cache headers
2) move origin closer to your actual users
3) or admit hot take was lukewarm