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Hosted Piwik Location - does it matter?
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Hosted Piwik Location - does it matter?

mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

I recently started to offer a Piwik as SaaS and my question to the community here is:

If you were a potential client, would the location actually matter for you?

Example: You have your site hosted in the US and the Piwik server was located in the EU or the other way around.

Would those extra milliseconds in load time matter?
If you were looking as a potential client, would you prefer a location at the same continent that your site was hosted?

Reason I'm asking is that I "need" to know if I should get a second location.
For those who are interested the current location is Milan, Italy.

Comments

  • For me yes, but I am a crazy Internet Marketer that wants everything 110% optimised.

    I'd say its better to have it local to your primary visitor base.

    e.g US visitors > US Piwik. UK visitors > UK Piwik etc.

    Thanked by 1mikho
  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran
    edited January 2015

    Absolutely, if I chose to host my main server in $LOCATION, it's likely for a reason (i.e. my main visitor base is there). So any external loadable resources should be also in that region. And making your site "almost load" with some unrelated "Waiting for www.doodle-analgetics.com..." hanging for some more seconds in the status bar is a bad style. (For that reason btw personally I am reverse-proxying to my Piwik from the main server).

    Thanked by 1mikho
  • Personally, I have Piwik available in FR-PAR/US-BUFF/US-SEA and other locations are also negotiatable like AU-SYD and US-NC.

    Thanked by 1mikho
  • AmitzAmitz Member
    edited January 2015

    Yes, it would matter to me. I would choose a location that is AT LEAST on the same continent as the main server if not even in the same country/city.

    Thanked by 1mikho
  • Would not matter to me. It's just some js right? Insert at the end of page, doesn't matter how fast it loads..

    Thanked by 1mikho
  • vimalwarevimalware Member
    edited January 2015

    @4n0nx said:
    Would not matter to me. It's just some js right? Insert at the end of page, doesn't matter how fast it loads..

    This is what was I was thinking too.
    Wouldn't Async js loading make geo-location even more moot?

    Thanked by 1mikho
  • edited January 2015

    @vimalware said:

    When JS cannot be loaded, piwik.php is used. It is also used for custom tracking/etc. I have found that piwik.php is much much slower than using the javascript.

    Thanked by 2mikho vimalware
  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    I want to thank all that answered and follow up with another question:
    Since it would be impossible to meet everyones expectations with location in every datacentre, would you consider three locations "enough" to cover the USA? East, west and central? I'm not considering south america as an option at this moment.

    When it comes to EU locations, if UK wasn't available, would NL be an option (8ms away).
    Perhaps three locations there as well? As Italy is already available, perhaps UK or NL and Germany? Perhaps even further east?

    When it comes to Asia I have no clue at all where to start. :)

  • Hongkong, Singapore, Malaysia - Also Indonesia and Thailand. But the first 3 ae the most sold ones.

    Thanked by 2mikho tommy
  • For EU I'd suggest you to have FR, DE and RU.

    Thanked by 1mikho
  • @William said:
    Hongkong, Singapore, Malaysia - Also Indonesia and Thailand. But the first 3 ae the most sold ones.

    Yeppp like William said, for Asia, get Singapore..good latency for others Asian Country

    or get Indonesian Server :)

    Thanked by 1mikho
  • International bandwidth is scarce in Indonesia though, it's all 10/100Mbit "openshare" which means best luck to get a few KB/s out of it. Dedicated BW costs far more than in SG and routes mainly through SG anyway, not much advantage even to local users in ID.

    Thanked by 1mikho
  • @William said:
    not much advantage even to local users in ID.

    It should be if the provider is connected through Indonesia Internet Exchange (IIX), and usually more "generous" compared to international bandwidth.

  • WilliamWilliam Member
    edited January 2015

    Yup, IIX BW is usually 1Gbit "openshare" and you can use pretty much over 100Mbit on that without anyone complaining - As far as i know, which is rare for Asia, all ISPs are connected on IIX, including the large telcos (and thus all their customers).

    Most ID telcos are also on either SGIX or HKIX so you can get away with another location in Asia for (the majority of, namely on the largest ISPs and again their customers) ID users but you get the burden on the ID telcos then to foot your bill - Service quality should be fine as they have plenty international BW/Peering available but still not a nice thing to do if you expect a lot of local ID traffic. Most likely not cheaper either, Servers and local BW in ID is quite cheap for asian pricing levels.

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