As a Swiss-based web hosting company, our primary goal in our first 5 years of work was to provide high-performance unmetered services to our customers in Europe. When it comes to performance, there are many tricks to do from a technical point of view. But even if you do all things right, there is one thing that you can’t get away with (for now), the laws of the universe.
If you’re reading this, I’m certain you already know that the Internet runs via underground networks of optical cables by emitting light from point A to point B and thus transferring data. The thing is when it comes to the light the universe put speed limit enforcement of ~300,000 km/s which is fast. But even so, a bit sent from New York will need ~60ms to reach London. This combined with the other networking equipment that is causing additional latency can bring up to 100ms of initial networking delay, which nowadays according to Google is slow.
We know that we can’t cheat the universe, so our obvious solution to this problem is to bring our services closer to our end customers, and we’re doing it. Additionally, this approach justified our unmetered business model because now we’re connected to major local IXPs (Internet eXchange Point), allowing us to peer with major ISPs and get much better bandwidth deals. Amsterdam was the starting point of our unmetered web-hosting invasion for conquering Europe. The Netherlands has a special place in our hearts, but besides that, it is one of the best-connected countries in Europe, so it made the logical choice. As soon as our client base grew, we started expanding to the “outer” boundaries of Europe on all sides. We’ve expanded in London, Madrid, Zürich & Vienna, which improved our network performance drastically in Europe but nowhere near being good enough for clients from the USA.
Introducing USA Based Unmetered VPS Hosting
As the heading implies, we did the logical step again, we’ve expanded our network in the USA, and we’re super excited about it.
As our USA invasion point, we’ve picked Chicago “The Windy City”. In fact, we’re located in the central business district of Chicago, or Chicago downtown if you prefer. This makes us one to two milliseconds away from any major business in Illinois and ~20-60ms away from any metropolis in the USA and Canada:
| Location | Latency in ms |
|---|---|
| Toronto, Canada | 17ms |
| Houston, TX | 22ms |
| New York, NY | 22ms |
| Denver, CO | 26ms |
| Miami, FL | 33ms |
| Los Angeles, CA | 58ms |
| Seattle, WA | 58ms |
| Phoenix, AZ | 60ms |
The other deciding factor for Chicago was the amazing remote hand support. There are a lot of factors that we need to cover when operating from a new data center. But the most important thing for us is to provide the best and timely support to our customers. As our HQ is in Europe, we must rely on good partners. For this reason, we do private tests for at least 1 year period before making a decision for expanding our public network at a certain location.
What Can You Expect?
As of today, all of our unmetered dedicated servers and unmetered VPS hosting plans are available in the USA. In the following week, we will expand our unmetered shared hosting as well. We’ve prepared our stock for high demand as we had a lot of clients interested in this location, and we do not expect to run out of stock, but fingers crossed. As always, our team will be ready 24/7 to answer any questions you may have if you’re interested in a trial period. Also, feel free to check our Looking Glass and do all the necessary tests you need.
In the following months, we will slowly expand our network in the USA and bring you even closer to your end customers. If you have any preferred location feel free to reach out to us.
