Scala websites have significant geographic latency

[katrinafyi]

For as long as I've used Scala, I've noticed the websites are extremely slow. This includes anything on scala-lang.org and all the API docs. I thought that surely this cannot be the case for everyone, and indeed it is geographically-dependent.

You can use this website https://www.openstatus.dev/play/checker and do a GET test for https://www.scala-lang.org/.

Spoiler results

	Region	Status	DNS	Connect	TLS	TTFB	Latency▲
Koyeb	🇩🇪 koyeb_fra Frankfurt, Germany	200	0ms	2ms	11ms	50ms	63ms
Koyeb	🇫🇷 koyeb_par Paris, France	200	0ms	4ms	10ms	63ms	77ms
Fly	🇬🇧 lhr London, United Kingdom	200	1ms	3ms	10ms	69ms	83ms
Fly	🇫🇷 cdg Paris, France	200	0ms	1ms	10ms	86ms	97ms
Railway	🇳🇱 railway_europe-west4-drams3a Amsterdam, Netherlands	200	1ms	2ms	10ms	103ms	115ms
Koyeb	🇺🇸 koyeb_was Washington, USA	200	0ms	3ms	12ms	114ms	129ms
Fly	🇸🇪 arn Stockholm, Sweden	200	1ms	1ms	10ms	150ms	161ms
Fly	🇩🇪 fra Frankfurt, Germany	200	122ms	2ms	9ms	46ms	179ms
Fly	🇳🇱 ams Amsterdam, Netherlands	200	128ms	1ms	8ms	91ms	228ms
Fly	🇺🇸 iad Ashburn, Virginia, USA	200	0ms	2ms	8ms	312ms	321ms
Railway	🇺🇸 railway_us-east4-eqdc4a Virginia, USA	200	1ms	4ms	10ms	309ms	324ms
Fly	🇺🇸 ewr Secaucus, New Jersey, USA	200	1ms	2ms	10ms	409ms	422ms
Fly	🇨🇦 yyz Toronto, Canada	200	1ms	2ms	11ms	445ms	458ms
Fly	🇺🇸 ord Chicago, Illinois, USA	200	1ms	4ms	10ms	464ms	479ms
Fly	🇿🇦 jnb Johannesburg, South Africa	200	0ms	1ms	8ms	576ms	585ms
Fly	🇺🇸 dfw Dallas, Texas, USA	200	6ms	2ms	14ms	606ms	629ms
Fly	🇺🇸 lax Los Angeles, California, USA	200	1ms	1ms	10ms	647ms	658ms
Railway	🇺🇸 railway_us-west2 California, USA	200	1ms	2ms	9ms	657ms	668ms
Koyeb	🇺🇸 koyeb_sfo San Francisco, USA	200	1ms	2ms	8ms	685ms	696ms
Fly	🇺🇸 sjc San Jose, California, USA	200	1ms	1ms	8ms	695ms	704ms
Koyeb	🇸🇬 koyeb_sin Singapore, Singapore	200	1ms	1ms	9ms	695ms	706ms
Fly	🇸🇬 sin Singapore, Singapore	200	1ms	1ms	9ms	706ms	717ms
Koyeb	🇯🇵 koyeb_tyo Tokyo, Japan	200	1ms	1ms	10ms	827ms	840ms
Fly	🇯🇵 nrt Tokyo, Japan	200	0ms	2ms	10ms	834ms	846ms
Fly	🇧🇷 gru Sao Paulo, Brazil	200	1ms	3ms	11ms	843ms	858ms
Railway	🇸🇬 railway_asia-southeast1-eqsg3a Singapore, Singapore	200	0ms	2ms	10ms	891ms	903ms
Fly	🇦🇺 syd Sydney, Australia	200	0ms	1ms	9ms	1,119ms	1,130ms
Fly	🇮🇳 bom Mumbai, India	200	1ms	2ms	8ms	1,584ms	1,594ms

This suggests that everything is served from one server near Germany (Switzerland?) and there is no geographically-distributed cache. Obviously, this leads to a poor user experience, especially if people are seeing >500ms latency on the Scala main page. I wonder if higher latency is correlated with having fewer users of Scala in that region.

Apologies if this is an already-known issue or if this is the wrong place to post it. Feel free to move.

[bishabosha]

@fsalvi This might be interesting for you

[som-snytt]

Anecdotally, I have browser bookmarks for stable and nightly docs, but I now always use the nightly unless I need to share a link. Stable tends to be pokey in the sense of slow. That is, of course, counter-intuitive.

[katrinafyi]

What's the URL of nightly docs? https://docs.scala-lang.org/api/all.html says "API documentation for nightly builds is not currently available in browsable form."

[som-snytt]

My bookmark https://dotty.epfl.ch/index.html was recently upgraded to https://nightly.scala-lang.org/index.html

The comment is due to

which is still true -- we can link to them again!

PS) nightlies sounds like a Britishism for a condition that gets one out of bed once or twice.

Edit: I see that archive link is for Scala 2.

[som-snytt]

I submitted scala/docs.scala-lang#3275 needless to add, pun alert!

Edit: we could call them dailies. In the so-called "old" days, jobs were run at night for practical reasons. There is no longer anything inherently nightly about the periodic publishing of docs.

Also, we call them docs, but did they all complete their dissertation? or habilitation? Most of us are grateful for a habitation, or a rehabilitation.

[fsalvi]

Well, all scala-lang.org websites are behing Cloudflare, so load is already distributed around the world through their reverse proxy, but the origin server is in Switzerland.
I'll do more tests.
@katrinafyi which country are you from?

[katrinafyi]

I'm in Australia

[fsalvi]

I confirm load time is much slower from Australia or Japan. I'll see what we can do to optimize it.