No? Apologies if I'm not able to communicate as clearly. The RTT would be to the furthest replica within `n` replicas ordered by proximity to the query origin,

No? Apologies if I'm not able to communicate as clearly. The RTT would be to the furthest replica within `n` replicas ordered by proximity to the query origin, where `n` is the number it would take to have a majority within the specified replication factor (so 2 for a replication factor of 3, 3 for 5, etc.). It would be different from the RTT observed with Amazon RDS as long as the furthest replica, as described above, is in a different zone/region/DC as compared to RDS's primary instance (assuming a similar topology). So with a replication factor of 3, if your DCs are in the UK, Australia and the US, if the RDS primary was in the US, all write requests from Australia would have to travel over to the US. But with a replica in each zone, write requests from Australia would hit the DC in Australia, and the DC in UK, avoiding the larger RTT to the US. To reiterate: I believe the argument is that this a more flexible design point than a single point of entry for all incoming writes, regardless of the origin.