Working out the best Azure DC (region) from your location, even Australia

When you live at the further reaches on our planet, like here in Australia, you need to pay attention to latency and performance in general. Of course there are arguments that latency and sovereignty at less important than one may think and for most modern applications, most well thought out applications, that's true. With two new regions in Australia this discussion becomes a moot point.

But which data center/centre is best for you?

This morning Tom Hollander pointed me at a new browser to region testing tool that I thought I would share. I suspect some of you may have seen Azure Speed as it been available for a few months which positively makes it a dinosaur in cloud terms.

For those interested in other tools, in the past I used the trusty Azure Throughput Analyzer (Microsoft Research)  but in more recent times I have been using Microsoft Azure Speed Test – Two 10 Degrees rather than https://azureping.info/ (Thanks Marc Walter). But Tom’s suggestion, cunningly named Azure Speed,  not only has the Australian DCs listed but it also has a number of additional tests beyond comparing the browser and storage Latency. It also has tests for traffic Manager, CDN  and the size tests too (ala Microsoft Research)

** caveat: computer connection, network, time of day, size of pipe, ISP, metrological patterns, acts of god, gremlins etc. all affect your results. Best to try it over a period to get an accurate picture.

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 16, 2014
  And electrons also have been proven to travel slower on Sundays (and also very early on weekdays, before their morning caffeine fix).