OP here. Little harsh.. laughably wrong? I did point out that we've seen this same behavior with EC2 instances (1) before. So there's a tiny bit of evidence to

OP here. Little harsh.. laughably wrong? I did point out that we've seen this same behavior with EC2 instances (1) before. So there's a tiny bit of evidence to suggest it might not be such a joke. Maybe this is what's lame, but I just don't think you are right about AWS vs non-AWS locations. Amazon's stance on this does make it clear that you aren't necessarily going to get the most optimal route (2) , true. But latency within Singapore tends to be measured in single digit ms (it's 710 KM2). What you are suggesting (if I understand correctly) is that a Singaporean's latency to US-East-1 can be faster than his or her latency to US-Southeast-1. I took some of those IPs, pinged them from EC2 instances in those regions and it's the same result. I agree GeoIP is a best-guess effort, especially with public dns. But if nothing else, the analysis merely confirms that. (1) https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=384090 https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=384090 (2) https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=330523#330523 https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=330523#...