Busiest Locations

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Cyge
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Busiest Locations

Post by Cyge »

What are the busiest locations in order here at NFO. By busy i mean like amount of players on your network.
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kraze
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Re: Busiest Locations

Post by kraze »

We wouldn't be able to get too specific here, but Chicago/Seattle are up there.
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Edge100x
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Re: Busiest Locations

Post by Edge100x »

Chicago is certainly the top location.
stickz

Re: Busiest Locations

Post by stickz »

Based on my experiences, the best possible location is New York. The peering and transit there overpowers pretty much any other location. I demand the best and use this for my worldwide playerbase from four continents.

Think of it like a car going from point A to point B. You can take the shorter route with lots of construction or the slightly longer one with no construction. You're still going to get there regardless how long that road is, but the longer one might work better for more clients.
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Re: Busiest Locations

Post by theRadAleks »

Hmm i wouldn't say worldwide, it's okay for South America and Europe.
stickz

Re: Busiest Locations

Post by stickz »

North & South America, Europe and Oceanic are my favourite continents. The rest don't like playing video games much, so it doesn't matter.
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Edge100x
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Re: Busiest Locations

Post by Edge100x »

Due to the quality of the bandwidth here, the primary factor for most clients boils down to distance to the server. The main exception is that the New York location is often best for South American clients, just because the big ISPs in South America (Brazil, in particular) terminate most of their links in NYC.

All of our US locations have similar bandwidth mixes, with Internap connecting to at least six NSPs to make sure that all major ISPs have a preferred path available.

Generally speaking,

- If your clients are everywhere in the US, Canada, and Mexico, Chicago or Dallas may be the best choice, because they are central.
- If your clients are just on the west coast, or split between the US and Asia/Australia, then a west-coast location will work better for you.
- If your clients are on just the east coast, or split between the US, South America/Latin America, and Europe, then New York will generally be best, but you should also look at Atlanta.
- If your clients are only in Europe or split between Asia and Europe, then Frankfurt will work best.
- If you expect to receive exceptional DDoS attack traffic, then you should consider Seattle and Chicago, because these locations have more upstream connectivity than others.

There is no harm in testing the top few locations that you are considering. Moves between locations are free.
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Re: Busiest Locations

Post by stickz »

For myself it's Los Angeles/New York or the highway. All exchange points are not created equally and most deep sea fiberoptic cables run directly into two locations. It stills works perfectly fine for most CA and US clients regardless.

The Frankfurt bandwidth quality isn't up to standard with New York because the Frankfurt DE-CIX isn't used.
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Re: Busiest Locations

Post by Edge100x »

All of our US locations are in strategic locations with high-density local peering, so it's rare for a packet to have to go to a remote location before being inserted onto the correct network if its destination is on the same continent. But, LA and NYC are where a majority of Asian and EU/SA providers (respectively) peer, so it makes sense that they would work well for a more global mix of players.

It's all about where your players are. Most of our customers want to keep latencies low for players within in the US and Canada, so it makes sense that Chicago has grown to be our most popular spot.
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