For application platforms targeting global users, especially those with the United States as the core market, the West Coast server of the United States is undoubtedly one of the popular options for deploying the main node. Especially in cities such as Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, and San Jose, cloud computing resources and network infrastructure are already quite mature, attracting more and more e-commerce, video, and API service providers to implement traffic-intensive projects here. So the question is: Can the West Coast server of the United States support high-traffic websites? Can it cope with TB-level daily transmission, millions of PV visits, or real-time interaction of thousands of concurrent users?
The West Coast of the United States is adjacent to the Pacific Ocean and Asia, and is a bridge for the interconnection of North American and Asian networks. Los Angeles is the optical cable hub of North America to Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore; San Jose (Silicon Valley) has a large number of backbone nodes of cloud service providers; data centers in these regions are generally connected to Tier 1 operator networks, with stable export bandwidth and high speed.
Servers deployed in the western United States have the following natural advantages: extremely fast access speed for local users in North America (<20ms), access delay for users in the Asia-Pacific region is between 100~180ms, and strong stability; at the same time, they support access to multiple locations around the world such as Europe and Latin America. Therefore, for enterprises that want to build a globally accessible website, the West Coast node has a strong "central deployment capability".
Can the network bandwidth of the Western US server cope with high traffic?
"High traffic" means that the website will generate a large amount of outgoing data every day, and whether it can guarantee high-speed transmission is the core indicator.
1. Adequate broadband bandwidth resources
The servers provided by US IDC usually have the following configurations: standard 1Gbps~10Gbps shared bandwidth, support exclusive 100Mbps~1Gbps bandwidth lines, mostly unlimited traffic or large capacity (more than 10TB) monthly traffic packages, support anti-DDoS reinforcement, BGP multi-line access. Compared with China or some Asian countries, US servers are more flexible and relaxed in bandwidth billing, which is very suitable for content-intensive businesses (such as video sites, material sites, picture hosting, etc.).
2. High-quality network operators
Mainstream data centers in the United States are usually connected to the following network operators: NTT, HE, Cogent, Zayo, Level3, PCCW and other Tier1 global backbones; specific data centers support China optimized backhaul, such as CN2 GT, CTG; BGP redundant line configuration, strong disaster recovery capability. These high-quality networks constitute a high-speed data channel under high concurrent access, which is the key guarantee for the stable online operation of the website.
How to optimize the website architecture to adapt to high traffic load?
High traffic is not only supported by hardware, but also requires scientific website architecture and cache mechanism.
1. Introduce CDN acceleration
The Western United States server can be deployed as a source server, combined with global CDN services, static resources (pictures, JS, CSS) are distributed to edge nodes; user requests are returned from the nearest node, which improves the response speed and reduces the bandwidth and request pressure of the source station.
2. Database master-slave or shard deployment
High concurrent access often leads to database read and write bottlenecks. Use master-slave architecture to separate read and write, introduce MySQL Proxy / Redis cache, and introduce message queues such as RabbitMQ/NSQ for high concurrent data writing.
3. Static front-end website
Content pages, product pages, and information pages can generate static HTML cache in advance, combined with Nginx deployment: reduce PHP/Java backend pressure, significantly shorten TTFB, and improve SEO crawling efficiency.
Several issues to pay attention to before deployment:
1. Time zone difference processing. The North American data center uses UTC-8 by default, and needs to be unified with the application time zone setting;
2. Optimization of users accessing mainland China. If you need to take into account mainland users, it is recommended to choose to access the CN2 line data center to avoid detours and packet loss; it can cooperate with Hong Kong/Singapore nodes for anti-generation acceleration.
3. DDoS defense capability assessment. High-traffic sites are very likely to become targets of attacks; most data centers in the United States support basic DDoS protection (20Gbps~1Tbps);
On the whole, the US West Coast server not only has the location advantage of the global network center, but also performs well in bandwidth resources, network stability, scalability, and security capabilities. It is an ideal global deployment node for high-traffic websites.
If the project users are mainly in the North American + East Asian markets, and have high requirements for big data transmission, overseas access experience, and high availability and stability, the US West Coast server is worth giving priority consideration.
