Does Distance Matter?

distance between hosting server and user

[coreyrickards]

Hi. I am about to sign up with a new webhost, and I'm wondering if I should take their physical location into consideration. I am in California, and my top pick of hosts is in North Carolina. Most of my users will be in California; would it have a negative affect on the user experience (ie: longer load times, etc) if the server is on the other side of the country? Also, I will have some downloadable and streaming media on the site... would this be better off on a more local server?
Thanks!
Corey

[wilderness]

I'm in northern Michigan and use a host in Colorado.
When I first started used a host in the UK.

Of course I don't use streaming and my downloads are pretty much restricted to PDF's. Even those wouldn't be considered downloads due to deep linking prevention.

The only problems I experience are related to mails and log times not being the same.

There are a few major hubs in NA which all things are go though.
West Coast, Chicago and NY. There may be a couple more.
In routing your site from CA to NC your going to catch all three both ways.

If your site is commercial I might consider a local host. However be WARNED even some local host cross country. You'll need to verify that.
If it's a hobby site or your just beginning you'll be OK.

[coreyrickards]

Thanks! It is a commercial site, although I really don't expect huge numbers of users for a while. I suppose I should get someone local, just to be safe. It shouldn't be too hard, considering I'm in the San Francisco area!

Thanks,
Corey

[Woz]

Theoretically (?) distance to server should not matter too much. Remember, even though you say the majority of your visitors will be from California, they actually could come from anywhere.

However, perhaps one thing to consider is how easy it is to get technical help. For example, I live in Sydney Australia, my host comapny is in Canberra Australia, almost a local phone call, but the servers are in the US. This seems to work well for me.

Onya
Woz

[brotherhood of LAN]

From my un-rememberable contacts, im sure that info travels the speed of light across the net and the slowest point is the modem/connection and computer respectively