Same for cable.. on TWC I can ping 1,500 miles away in ~60ms. L3 latency is usually a small fraction of the initial website load time. Inline the js + css, str

Same for cable.. on TWC I can ping 1,500 miles away in ~60ms. L3 latency is usually a small fraction of the initial website load time. Inline the js + css, strip whitespace, enable gzip, use memcached, get a server that can fit the whole DB in RAM, etc. Preventing packet loss is very important, though (a TCP retrans adds 2-3 seconds). I do think datacenters have a real edge there.