I’m considering purchasing an AWS EC2 reserved instance for personal use (for among other things, this blog) instead of continuing to pay the high rate for an on demand instance. Since I’m going to have to live with the region a reserved instance is in for several years, I figured it would be worth the time to see what the latency options are. I sort of expected there to be an in browser javascript program or downloadable script to do this for me but was unable to find one. The best pre-canned solution I could find via google was this project https://github.com/turnkeylinux/aws-datacenters mentioned in this stackoverflow thread. However, it’s not really what I was looking for.
The quick and dirty test I decided on was to run ping tests to three m1.small on demand instances, one in each of the US regions.
| region-az | min/avg/max/mdev |
|---|---|
us-east-1d |
71.314/74.161/133.174/6.575 |
us-west-1c |
39.912/45.806/61.717/3.820 |
us-west-2c |
67.426/73.756/91.390/3.274 |
As I’m currently located in Tucson, AZ, I expected us-west-1/N. California to have the lowest latency but was surprised by the fact that us-west-2/Oregon had much higher ping times than us-west-1. It’s also a bit surprising that us-west-2 & use-east-1/N. Virginia were so similar since geographically us-east-1 is much further away. Once again confirming the axiom that physical distance != network distance (latency). While there is additional cost associated with us-west-1 the latency reduction looks fairly appealing.
us-east-1d
jhoblitt@dull ~ $ ping -c100 -i0.5 -q ec2-50-19-115-229.compute-1.amazonaws.com PING ec2-50-19-115-229.compute-1.amazonaws.com (50.19.115.229) 56(84) bytes of data. --- ec2-50-19-115-229.compute-1.amazonaws.com ping statistics --- 100 packets transmitted, 100 received, 0% packet loss, time 49597ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 71.314/74.161/133.174/6.575 ms jhoblitt@dull ~ $ traceroute -A ec2-50-19-115-229.compute-1.amazonaws.com traceroute to ec2-50-19-115-229.compute-1.amazonaws.com (50.19.115.229), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 192.168.255.1 (192.168.255.1) [AS65190] 0.248 ms 0.573 ms 0.681 ms 2 10.34.180.1 (10.34.180.1) [AS65534] 8.639 ms 9.538 ms 12.967 ms 3 70.169.76.140 (70.169.76.140) [AS36270] 13.997 ms 14.087 ms 14.109 ms 4 70.169.73.24 (70.169.73.24) [AS22773] 17.740 ms 19.864 ms 20.842 ms 5 chnddsrj01-ae2.0.rd.ph.cox.net (70.169.76.229) [AS36270] 64.151 ms * 65.053 ms 6 68.1.4.139 (68.1.4.139) [AS22773] 76.405 ms 71.179 ms 71.866 ms 7 ip70-167-150-46.at.at.cox.net (70.167.150.46) [AS22773] 74.197 ms 80.486 ms 72.21.221.78 (72.21.221.78) [AS16509] 78.505 ms 8 72.21.220.29 (72.21.220.29) [AS16509] 86.343 ms 72.21.220.45 (72.21.220.45) [AS16509] 87.721 ms 88.729 ms 9 72.21.222.149 (72.21.222.149) [AS16509] 79.547 ms 81.571 ms 205.251.245.65 (205.251.245.65) [AS16509] 81.446 ms 10 * * * 11 * * * 12 * * * 13 216.182.224.249 (216.182.224.249) [AS14618/AS16509] 72.096 ms 216.182.232.51 (216.182.232.51) [AS14618/AS16509] 74.875 ms 216.182.224.23 (216.182.224.23) [AS14618/AS16509] 75.778 ms 14 * * * 15 * * * 16 * * * 17 * * * 18 * * * 19 * * * 20 * * * 21 * * * 22 * * * 23 * * * 24 * * * 25 * * * 26 * * * 27 * * * 28 * * * 29 * * * 30 * * *
us-west-1c
jhoblitt@dull ~ $ ping -c100 -i0.5 -q ec2-184-72-12-24.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com PING ec2-184-72-12-24.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com (184.72.12.24) 56(84) bytes of data. --- ec2-184-72-12-24.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com ping statistics --- 100 packets transmitted, 100 received, 0% packet loss, time 49599ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 39.912/45.806/61.717/3.820 ms jhoblitt@dull ~ $ traceroute -A ec2-184-72-12-24.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.comtraceroute to ec2-184-72-12-24.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com (184.72.12.24), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 192.168.255.1 (192.168.255.1) [AS65190] 0.268 ms 0.374 ms 0.491 ms 2 10.34.180.1 (10.34.180.1) [AS65534] 8.178 ms 12.531 ms 13.484 ms 3 70.169.76.142 (70.169.76.142) [AS36270] 13.623 ms 13.743 ms 13.786 ms 4 70.169.73.26 (70.169.73.26) [AS22773] 18.598 ms 18.478 ms 17.530 ms 5 70.169.75.157 (70.169.75.157) [AS22773] 16.464 ms 16.551 ms 15.480 ms 6 paltbprj01-ae0.0.rd.pt.cox.net (68.1.0.234) [AS22773] 49.050 ms 38.110 ms 44.630 ms 7 68.105.31.22 (68.105.31.22) [AS22773] 56.032 ms paix01-sfo4.amazon.com (198.32.176.36) [AS4637] 54.964 ms 68.105.31.22 (68.105.31.22) [AS22773] 55.891 ms 8 205.251.229.14 (205.251.229.14) [AS800] 56.983 ms 205.251.229.30 (205.251.229.30) [AS800] 51.578 ms 205.251.229.14 (205.251.229.14) [AS800] 50.448 ms 9 72.21.222.19 (72.21.222.19) [AS16509] 51.204 ms 56.984 ms 56.862 ms 10 * 216.182.236.108 (216.182.236.108) [AS16509] 45.301 ms 52.047 ms 11 * * * 12 * * * 13 * * * 14 * * * 15 * * * 16 * * * 17 * * * 18 * * * 19 * * * 20 * * * 21 * * * 22 * * * 23 * * * 24 * * * 25 * * * 26 * * * 27 * * * 28 * * * 29 * * * 30 * * *
us-west-2c
jhoblitt@dull ~ $ ping -c100 -i0.5 -q ec2-54-245-47-252.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com PING ec2-54-245-47-252.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com (54.245.47.252) 56(84) bytes of data. --- ec2-54-245-47-252.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com ping statistics --- 100 packets transmitted, 100 received, 0% packet loss, time 49595ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 67.426/73.756/91.390/3.274 ms jhoblitt@dull ~ $ traceroute -A ec2-54-245-47-252.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com traceroute to ec2-54-245-47-252.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com (54.245.47.252), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets 1 192.168.255.1 (192.168.255.1) [AS65190] 15.025 ms 15.124 ms 15.210 ms 2 10.34.180.1 (10.34.180.1) [AS65534] 22.711 ms 37.713 ms 37.718 ms 3 70.169.76.140 (70.169.76.140) [AS36270] 37.723 ms 37.732 ms 37.733 ms 4 70.169.73.24 (70.169.73.24) [AS22773] 37.859 ms 37.855 ms 37.871 ms 5 70.169.75.153 (70.169.75.153) [AS22773] 37.741 ms * 37.639 ms 6 68.1.5.129 (68.1.5.129) [AS22773] 68.206 ms 55.703 ms 49.526 ms 7 68.105.31.22 (68.105.31.22) [AS22773] 59.709 ms paix01-sfo4.amazon.com (198.32.176.36) [AS4637] 61.030 ms 61.169 ms 8 205.251.229.20 (205.251.229.20) [AS800] 60.756 ms 205.251.229.16 (205.251.229.16) [AS800] 60.883 ms 205.251.229.4 (205.251.229.4) [AS800] 54.225 ms 9 205.251.232.64 (205.251.232.64) [AS16509] 78.158 ms 205.251.232.96 (205.251.232.96) [AS16509] 71.774 ms 205.251.232.64 (205.251.232.64) [AS16509] 77.008 ms 10 * 205.251.232.157 (205.251.232.157) [AS16509] 78.743 ms 78.251 ms 11 205.251.232.169 (205.251.232.169) [AS16509] 83.176 ms 78.196 ms 73.575 ms 12 ec2-50-112-0-147.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com (50.112.0.147) [AS16509] 77.015 ms ec2-50-112-0-185.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com (50.112.0.185) [AS16509] 76.785 ms ec2-50-112-0-147.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com (50.112.0.147) [AS16509] 74.618 ms 13 * * * 14 ec2-50-112-0-179.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com (50.112.0.179) [AS16509] 74.742 ms * * 15 * * * 16 * * * 17 * * * 18 * * * 19 * * * 20 * * * 21 * * * 22 * * * 23 * * * 24 * * * 25 * * * 26 * * * 27 * * * 28 * * * 29 * * * 30 * * *