If you have website hosting through a hosting provider, your site resides on their physical server (or one they’ve leased) somewhere in the world. You may not have checked where your server is, but it’s good to be aware of its location. Though it’s not the most important feature, it may affect how fast your site is delivered to visitors. You’ll most likely want to choose a server located in the same country as most of your users.

How CDNs Decrease The Importance Of Your Server Location

Using a content delivery network (CDN) may offset any decrease in speed caused by server location. CDNs cache static files from your website, such as Javascript and the cascading style sheet (CSS). They’re stored on servers in multiple locations around the world. When a visitor accesses your website, the files are delivered to them via the closest server, maximizing your site speed for that user.

How Server Hosting Location Impacts Online Gaming

Because the physical location of your server can have an impact on how fast your site is delivered to visitors, online gaming platforms should be aware of their server locations above almost any other hosted application.CDNs certainly help online games serve their content quickly to maintain universal user experience. However, with so many of the most popular games on the web being MMORPG installations, server speed, internet connection and server location can be actually be a matter of (virtual) life and death to millions of users.Consider this: if two gamers are playing a game like World of Warcraft and one is located in the same country as the physical server, while the other is located in another part of the world – which player’s actions are going to be processed by the server most quickly?If you are setting up a server to host an MMORPG, make sure you note the physical location of your server before completing installation.

The Best Server Hosting Location Finders

While many hosting providers will allow you to select the physical location of your server, not all of them are upfront with their customers about the actual whereabouts of their servers. If you are interested in seeking out hosting locations for your own servers or someone else’s servers, there are tools on the web to help you discover their location.Below, we have included a list of four websites you can quickly go to lookup server hosting locations for any domain or IP you come across while surfing the web.

• IP Location.net: Find a geolocation of an IP address including latitude, longitude, city, region and country. Compare the data from multiple providers.
• Check-Host.net: Check-Host is a modern online tool for website monitoring and checking availability of hosts, DNS records, IP addresses. It supports the latest technologies such as localized domain names (both punycode and original formats), hostname IPv6 records (also known as AAAA record).
• DNSstuff: The DNSstuff Toolbox tools can help users perform forensic analysis of name and email servers, path analysis, authenticate and locate domains, keep an eye on blacklists, and perform forensic analysis on a variety of domains.
• ViewDNS.info: Your one source for DNS-related tools

In conclusion:

Anyone looking to invest in Web hosting should be aware of the location of their host’s servers. Even though it may not be a major factor in selecting a host, finding a provider whose servers are close to the majority of your customers and other users can make a significant difference in site performance, search results ranking, and user experience.