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Today's web is more interactive than ever, with Javascript and AJAX making communication between the server and visitor more important than ever, and especially with more and more applications moving to the web and "cloud computing" being the next big wave. In cloud computing, the software and data exists together as a web service, out there in the network instead of on your storage drive. Imagine Photoshop without having it installed on your computer, but accessing it over the Internet.

Now, the Internet is certainly connected at as many points as possible, but nothing is ever completely reliable. For instance, users within the range of the Middle East and Mediterranean region got a lesson in connectivity when a few underseas cables got cut in 2008, resulting in the Middle Eastern region being separated from the rest of the world as far as the Internet was concerned. Anywhere where there's water, there's a cable going across it, and all Internet access across that water goes through that cable.

In a packet-switched network, of which the Internet at large is an example, latency is measured either one-way or round-trip. The round-trip latency means the time between sending a request, and when the result of that request (a requested web page) gets sent back. But just like cars on a highway, there are only so many packets that any network can send and receive.

Just as with a network of highways, bottlenecks in a network mean that a lot of data needs to move through a limited number of connection points. A typical packet will have to be forwarded over many links via many gateways, each of which will not begin to forward the packet until it has been completely received. This lag adds up.

In summary, it does make a difference where a server is located. From wherever you are, you can try accessing a website in Russia, one in China, one in Canada, and one in Australia, and note the difference. Generally you want your web server to be located as close to your intended web audience as possible, so as to cut down on the lag time.

A difference of a few seconds, or even fractions of a second, may not seem like much. But consider that the average web visitor leaves within ten microseconds.

Today's web surfer will almost definitely be using a tabbed web browser, so they have even less reason not to move on to the next site if the current one is loading slowly. Frequently, a user with a tabbed browser might click down a page of search results opening several in new tabs, then jump to the page that loads first.

This is the new web audience that we'll all have to deal with, and they're impatient. So if we want their visit, we're going to have to try to make them happy, and be the first to do so.