Locations & latency expectations

## Choosing the right server location

When hosting a dedicated server, physical proximity matters. Data packets travel across fibre optic routes, so the closer your server is to your customers, the lower the network latency and the faster pages and games load. Conversely, servers located on another continent can introduce delays that are noticeable for real-time applications.

## Available locations

IllusionCloud offers dedicated servers in several data centre regions. The major choices include:

- **France and Western Europe** – facilities in France, Germany and the Netherlands provide excellent connectivity to most of Europe with round‑trip latencies typically under 30 ms. These locations are ideal for European audiences.
- **United Kingdom** – suitable for UK‑based sites and services with sub‑20 ms latency to London and other British carriers.
- **North America** – Canadian and eastern U.S. locations serve clients in Canada and the United States with typical latencies of 10‑20 ms within the region and 70‑100 ms to Europe.
- **Eastern Europe and Russia** – datacentres in Poland or Eastern Europe offer good connectivity to Central and Eastern European users and Russia, with round trips under 40 ms.

More locations may be added as demand grows; check the order form for the latest list.

## Latency expectations

Approximate round‑trip times from common regions:

- **Intra‑Europe:** 10–30 ms between western European capitals, 30–50 ms between western and eastern Europe.
- **Europe to North America:** 70‑100 ms to the east coast and 100‑150 ms to the west coast.
- **Europe to Asia:** 150‑250 ms depending on route and location.

These figures are averages; actual latencies depend on your ISP’s peering routes and network congestion.

## Factors to consider

When choosing a dedicated server location:

- **Audience location:** Host content where most of your users are located to minimise latency.
- **Compliance and data sovereignty:** Some industries require data to reside within specific jurisdictions.
- **Redundancy:** Hosting in multiple regions can improve resilience and global reach.
- **Network carriers:** Look at the peering and transit partners of the datacentre to ensure good connectivity to your users.

## Best practices

- Deploy servers as close as possible to your end users.
- Use a content delivery network (CDN) to cache static assets globally.
- Implement monitoring and measure latency from different regions to evaluate performance.
- Consider multi‑region deployments for worldwide applications.