I've set up a couple of EC2 instances—one in the us-east-1 region and one in ca-central-1, both running on T3 Medium. My client, a Flint 2 router located in Ajax, Ontario, uses these servers. When I connect to the us-east-1 server and run a speed test, I'm seeing speeds around 700 Mbps. However, when I connect to the ca-central-1 server, the speed drops significantly to about 280 Mbps. Can anyone explain why there's such a large difference in performance? Is it purely a matter of distance, or is it true that EC2 instances in us-east-1 have better networking hardware compared to those in ca-central-1?
4 Answers
There are a lot of factors at play here. Besides distance, using T3 instances might skew your results since they're burstable. Consider using a more dedicated instance type to get reliable performance measurements.
You mentioned your location, which is important because it affects how far the data has to travel. Even though the EC2 instances' hardware is the same, the routes that packets take can differ greatly, leading to varied speeds.
Distance can definitely affect latency, but it shouldn't impact throughput as much as you're seeing. This could be due to an issue somewhere along the route to the speed test server, possibly with how your ISP handles connections to ca-central-1.
There are so many variables that could contribute to this issue. Things like the path your internet traffic takes can affect speed, as well as settings on your ISP's routers. It's important to consider all aspects of how data is routed.
Yeah, I indicated my location as Ajax, Ontario.