Updated 20-Sep-2023
Tokyo still top choice for Asia HQ Datacenter
Even with multiple options coming online in Singapore, Tokyo is still the best option for a single, Asia-based datacenter. Even when serving locations such as Thailand and Vietnam, Tokyo is a strong competitor to Singapore.
Linode is my unmanaged VPS of choice. They have a great service, are as reliable as any other, generally very speedy responsiveness, and great prices. They also have a number of locations, including: Germany, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
When Singapore is a Better Datacenter Choice
- UPDATE 21-Nov-2016: Tokyo 2 is now publicly available at Linode, my testing has continued to back up the assertion that Tokyo is still the best spot for an Asian HQ Internet presence.
My current Tokyo datacenter can't accept new customers, or do any hardware upgrades as it is completely sold out (and has been for a few years now). However, a new Tokyo datacenter will come online by the end of 2016, which is fairly easy to migrate to.Currently the best option is a Singapore location, then moving to Tokyo when the new system comes online. Or just wait until Tokyo is available and make the move then. Those are the two options.The only time Singapore would be a better choice, would be if Singapore, and/or Malaysia, and/or Australia are the primary markets, or if there is some kind of legal requirement for being in Singapore.
For East Asia, Little Difference between Tokyo and Singapore
To Australia, a Singapore location would be slightly faster, and to the US and UK, slightly slower. Submarine lines (that run most of the backbone Internet traffic, as it doesn't go through other countries, more secure). More fiber is being built between Singapore and Australia (some of it came online in 2015).
There is a significant interconnect between Tokyo and Singapore (and other countries in between) coming online this year. Therefore to locations such as Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Taiwan there is little difference.
Routes to Australia - Tokyo Leads the Pack
This section was added in August, 2017 After six months of suffering with a Singapore location, I've finally come to the conclusion that raw pipes are definitely not enough. Others have made the same argument. To summarize from not only ping speeds but better, fully-loaded (but optimized for speed) ecommerce sites when trying to reach the Australia market: - Tokyo is the fastest connect to Sydney (besides Sydney itself), however there is some delay to Europe - Sydney itself is superfast to Australia but sucks to everywhere else. - Northern California is very fast to North America, and acceptable to Sydney and to Europe - My estimation is as follows: - About 1 second load time on an optimized WooCommerce site with caching - Another 0.5 second for transit within a fast region (NA, EU) - From N.Calif, add 1.5 seconds to EU and 1.5 seconds to Sydney (and 0.5 seconds within NA) - From Tokyo, add 1 second to Sydney, 1 second to North America, and 2 seconds to the EU - From Singapore, add 1.5 seconds to Sydney, 2.5 seconds to North America, and 3.5 seconds to the EU - From Sydney, add 3 seconds to the EU and 2 seconds to North America, and 0.5 seconds within Australia - Tokyo is a balance of fast to Sydney and North America, and moderate speed to Europe - Northern California is a balance of moderate speed to EU and Sydney, and fast to North America - Sydney is a balance of fast to Australia, and slow to EU and North America Note that any edge location can be sped up with a content delivery network (one that works). P.S., AWS Tokyo also has Lightsail which is Amazon's VPS bundle, that includes things like a decent amount of data transfer, disk, 3 dns zones in Route 53, etc., at no extra charge.
Arctic Fiber Lines
A few arctic fiber lines being deployed which will cut time from Tokyo to the US West Coast as well as Europe.
Single Location - Tokyo
In summary, Tokyo still appears to be the best single place in Asia to be located (which is why it is so popular, and generally more expensive). Tokyo has decent speeds to Europe, more redundancy, and faster speeds to the US (already a fast link), and to Australia (via Sydney).