Among US VPS, California has always been a hot spot that users pay close attention to. Los Angeles is the representative of California VPS, so what is the difference between "California VPS" and "Los Angeles VPS"? Which one is more suitable for mainland China to visit?
First of all, we must make it clear that "California VPS" is a geographical concept, while "Los Angeles VPS" is a specific subdivided city node under it. California is the largest state in the western United States, with jurisdiction over multiple cities and data center nodes, such as Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, etc. Los Angeles is one of the most developed cities in California for communications and is the most important "network entrance" for Chinese users to access the US network.
Therefore, all Los Angeles VPS belong to California VPS, but California VPS is not necessarily located in Los Angeles. This is also the key to many users confusing concepts.
Geographic location and network optical cable structure:
To visit the United States from the mainland, the main submarine optical cables are China-US CN2 GIA (telecom dedicated line), Pacific Light Cable Network, Asia-America Gateway, (AAG) SEA-US (Southeast Asia-West America), etc. Almost all of these optical cables land on the coast of California, especially in Los Angeles and San Jose.
Among them, the international export routes of China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile mostly use Los Angeles as the main landing point, and then transmit to other cities through the US intranet.
This leads to a very obvious rule: the best entry node for visiting the United States from mainland China is Los Angeles. Although other California cities are not far away, if "multi-hop forwarding" occurs on the network, it may cause additional delays and stability loss.
Access speed: Latency performance comparison
We take the ping test of multiple VPS nodes from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places as an example, and summarize as follows:
Los Angeles CN2 GIA average delay 135-160, telecom optimized direct connection, extremely low packet loss rate (<0.5%)
San Jose BGP average delay 160-200, ordinary international BGP, low to medium packet loss rate
Old San Francisco CMI average delay 170-210, mobile transit, medium to high packet loss rate
Auckland BGP average delay 180+, three lines mixed, high packet loss rate (>1%)
It can be seen that:
Los Angeles node has a significantly lower delay than other California cities due to the direct connection to CN2 GIA or Unicom AS9929 line.
Although San Jose has excellent hardware facilities, the access speed is significantly slower due to the slightly longer distance and no optimized backhaul.
Other cities in California (such as Oakland) have almost no direct connection with major Chinese telecom operators, and the access experience is the worst.
Therefore, from the perspective of pure access speed, Los Angeles is undoubtedly the best node choice in California.
Comparison of line resources and access capabilities
As a backbone hub city on the west coast of the United States, Los Angeles has extremely rich international network resources: most CN2 GIA, AS9929, CMI, HE, TATA, GTT and other trunk ISP lines have PoP points;
In contrast, although cities such as San Jose and San Francisco also have certain IDC facilities, there are fewer optimized lines, especially most of them do not have CN2 GIA direct connection, and the cost is high.
Therefore, in terms of domestic access friendliness: Los Angeles VPS has the most comprehensive network access capabilities in California.
Which is more suitable for mainland access between California VPS and Los Angeles VPS? For mainland Chinese users to access overseas business, Los Angeles VPS is the best choice in California, taking into account speed, stability, resource richness, and high cost performance.
