How to solve the issue of high latency and long loading times in China?

Chinese users who want to access websites, applications or services operated in Europe or America must have a lot of patience, as access usually involves very long loading times. This often leads to the conclusion that the geographical distance and the resulting high latency between the Chinese user and the Western application is responsible for this. But are distance and latency actually a significant factor in these long loading times?

It is not a latency issue

A latency of around 200 to 300 milliseconds is usually expected between servers in China and Europe or in China and America. Assuming that these packet runtimes are the primary cause of the long loading times, reducing the geographical distance should lead to a significant improvement in performance. This can be achieved, for example, by running the associated application on a server near China, such as in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau or Singapore. This reduces the expected latency to 50 to 100 milliseconds, which represents a significant optimization. In practice, however, it turns out that a geographical approximation offers almost no performance improvement. Loading times of well over 10 seconds are still common when a Chinese user accesses a website on a server in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau or Singapore.

The conclusion that geographical distance and thus the high latency are primarily responsible for the poor performance of Western applications turns out to be a fallacy in practice. There are other factors that have a much greater impact on loading times.

The real reason: huge packet loss at the Chinese firewall

Due to censorship in China, all data packets that want to cross China's borders have to go through the Chinese firewall and are inspected in detail by it. Even for a data packet that is ultimately allowed through the firewall, this inspection process takes a lot of time. In addition, the Chinese firewall often does not have sufficient resources to check all incoming data packets immediately. This leads to longer waiting times at the Chinese firewall, especially at peak times, which quickly leads to 20 to 40 percent of all data packets being lost.

With such high packet loss rates, the actual latency between the Chinese user and the Western application plays a minor role. Even a comparatively low latency would add up quickly if the data packet has to be requested and transmitted several times before it finally reaches the user in China. This particularly affects websites whose content (especially images and videos) requires the transfer of several thousand data packets.

Why do the loading times of my website fluctuate so much in China?

When evaluating the performance of a website or application for Chinese users, you should not rely on a snapshot. Because the loading times depend heavily on the load on the Chinese firewall at that moment. Ideally, the inspection by the Chinese firewall would have almost no noticeable impact on performance. However, due to the lack of resources, this ideal case rarely occurs.

Nevertheless, the Chinese firewall is not always overloaded to the same extent. The performance of Western applications suffers, particularly when peak working hours in China overlap with those in Europe or America. During these periods, there are high volumes of data packets that have to be checked by the Chinese firewall, and thus the waiting times and packet loss rates at the firewall increase. Outside of such peak times, the influence of the Chinese firewall on loading times decreases significantly and the overall performance can be acceptable or even quite good. Therefore, performance evaluations in China should take place over a longer period of time and, ideally, from several locations.

Hosting the website in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau or Singapore does not solve the problem

Hosting the application geographically near China reduces latency, but does not offer any improvement for packet loss at the Chinese firewall. This is because locations such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau or Singapore are outside China's borders and all data packets sent to China still have to go through the Chinese firewall. The reduced latency is almost irrelevant for the overall performance given the high packet loss rates.

How can I ensure consistently good performance for my application in China?

Hosting the website near China does not really improve loading times, as it only reduces the latency between the application and the user in China. Instead, a permanent solution must reduce waiting times and the high packet loss rates at the Chinese firewall.

One possible solution is to run the website on a server located in Mainland China directly. This allows data packets to be sent directly from the server to the user in China without being inspected by the Chinese firewall. A hosting solution with a server location in China requires the application for an ICP license, which is only possible for companies with a branch in China. At the same time, it should be ensured that the server in China can be reliably reached from the West. The Chinese firewall can also have a negative impact on data transfer in this direction, and this could simply shift the performance problem so that your IT administrators and your web agency can hardly access the server in China.

Alternatively, stable data transfer would have to be ensured through the Chinese firewall, especially during peak hours. This can only be achieved through specially designed backbones, networks and Internet connections. The advantages of this approach are that no ICP license is required and that the geographical distance between users in China and the Western application hardly plays a role anymore. The big challenge lies in finding a provider in Europe or America who offers such a service at affordable conditions.

Affordable hosting solutions from weber.cloud China for your Chinese website

At weber.cloud China, you will find the right solution to reliably accelerate your application in China. As a company with a branch in China, you can benefit from hosting solutions with servers in China and receive support when applying for an ICP license. However, if you do not have a branch in China, you can still benefit from suitable solutions in Germany with a direct connection to China, which enables stable data transfer through the Chinese firewall - and at attractive and affordable conditions.

The special feature of the hosting solutions from weber.cloud China: If you do not want to move your application, you can combine your existing hosting and server infrastructure with the proxy cache solutions from weber.cloud China.

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