AWS Hong Kong vs Singapore vs Tokyo: Which Region is the fastest for foreign trade and cross-border business?
For foreign trade and cross-border business, the loading speed of the website and API directly determines the conversion rate. If the user waits 1 second more, the bounce rate will increase exponentially.
When deploying AWS infrastructure in Asia Pacific, the vast majority of architects and cross-border sellers are swinging between the three top nodes:
Hong Kong (ap-east-1)
,
Singapore (ap-southeast-1)
and
Tokyo (ap-northeast-1)
.
Although they are all on AWS's global high-speed backbone network, the actual network latency and business performance vary greatly due to differences in physical distance, submarine cable direction, and target audience.
So, which one should I choose? This article will start from
Network delay measurement, business scenario matching, computing power cost
and also
Business Operation Details
Four dimensions, for you to completely dismantle the selection logic.
1. network delay measurement: the bottom difference of the three nodes
The essence of network delay is "physical distance" and "submarine cable routing".
The speed of data transmission in optical fiber is limited, and the optical cable must bypass the land or trench, so the location of the node directly determines the lower limit of delay.
According to network data monitoring and node Ping value statistics, the average round trip time (RTT) of the three nodes to different major markets is as follows:
Target Access Market
Hong Kong Region (ap-east-1)
Singapore Region (ap-southeast-1)
Tokyo Region (ap-northeast-1)
Mainland China (South China/East China)
15 - 35 ms
40 - 60 ms
60 - 90 ms
Southeast Asia (Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam)
35 - 50 ms
15 - 30 ms
90 - 120 ms
Japan, Korea and East Asia Markets
45 - 60 ms
65 - 85 ms
10 - 25 ms
North America (West/Los Angeles)
140 - 160 ms
160 - 180 ms
100 - 120 ms
Europe (Germany/UK)
180 - 220 ms
160 - 190 ms
140 - 160 ms
core transmission logic disassembly:
Hong Kong (Hong Kong): Adjacent to mainland China, it is a "golden transit point" for cross-border B2B/B2C import and export business ". If your business has to take into account both the call of the mainland supply chain system and the radiation of Southeast Asia and East Asia, the Hong Kong node has an excellent overall sense.
Singapore (Singapore): Southeast Asia's digital hub. The national submarine cable nodes directly connected to Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines are the densest, and it is the absolute first choice for sailing to Southeast Asia.
Tokyo (Tokyo): not only the king of the local Japanese and Korean markets, but also the core hub of trans-Pacific transcontinental optical cables. If your business needs frequency
The transcontinental data transmission between the Tokyo node and North America (US-West) is significantly better than that of Hong Kong and Singapore.
2. Business Scenario Matching: Make Decisions Based on Your Business Form
It is not enough to look at the delay figures alone, but must be accurately matched with specific cross-border business patterns:
1. Independent stations and cross-border e-commerce (Shopify self-built stations/independent App)
Recommended node: Singapore or Tokyo
Analysis: If it is an independent station for the Southeast Asian market (e. g. Shopee, Lazada eco-chain service), the response speed of Singapore nodes is not as fast as it is. If it is an independent station for the United States, Japan and Europe, the Tokyo node has a natural backbone advantage when connecting the United States, West, Japan and South Korea.
2. Hybrid cloud architecture and cross-border ERP (need to frequently connect the mainland database/supply chain)
Recommended node: Hong Kong
Analysis: The order system and storage data of many foreign trade enterprises are kept in China (such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou computer rooms), while the front-end display or API is deployed on AWS. The latency of connecting Hong Kong Region to major domestic operators (Telecom, China Unicom, and China Mobile) is extremely low, which can effectively reduce the timeout rate of cross-regional API calls.
3. Game going out to sea with high-frequency trading/real-time interaction
Recommended nodes: decide according to the distribution of target players (Singapore in Southeast Asia, Tokyo in Japan, South Korea/North America)
Analysis: Real-time competitive games or financial transactions are extremely sensitive to delays (>50ms will produce significant stuck). Singapore's direct connection network in Southeast Asia can ensure that the Ping value of most cities is controlled within 30ms.
3. costs and infrastructure details (hidden costs that cannot be ignored)
In addition to network speed, the pricing and provisioning policies for cloud resources are also an important part of architecture selection:
1. Difference between instance and traffic unit price
Tokyo (Tokyo): The computing resources are extremely rich (for example, the latest EC2 instance types are usually the first to go online), but the network outbound traffic (Data Transfer Out) and the unit price of EC2 instances are overall higher than those in Singapore.
Singapore (Singapore): The price is in the middle and the cost-effective. It is one of the nodes with the richest resources and the most complete services in the Asia-Pacific region.
Hong Kong (Hong Kong): Due to the limited construction cost and bandwidth resources of the computer room, the overall resource unit price in Hong Kong is relatively the highest and belongs to the Opt-in region (you need to manually enable it in the console).
2. AWS Billing and Payment Optimization
For offshore businesses and cross-border sellers, AWS's pay-as-you-go model is flexible, but foreign exchange payments, dual-currency credit card limit limits, and complex invoice reimbursement processes tend to increase financial operations costs.
💡Tips for Enterprise Financial Optimization: When deploying multi-Region architecture, enterprises can usually carry out unified bill management through AWS Top-up Partners (AWS Partner). Choose a regular replacement channel
It can not only solve the rigid demand of domestic enterprises for public reconciliation and issuance of special VAT invoices (special invoices), but also obtain a certain proportion of usage rebate or bill reduction with the help of business discounts of partners, thus effectively reducing the monthly bill expenditure of high-cost regions such as Hong Kong and Tokyo.
4. selection decision flow chart (one minute quick check)
If you still feel tangled, you can quickly filter according to the following logical chain:
Where is your core target audience?
◦ 1. Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam ── ─ ─> Select [Singapore Region]]
├─ 2. Japan, South Korea, or need to take into account the North American market ── ─> Select [Tokyo Region]]
├─ 3. Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Southeast Asia-> Select [Hong Kong Region]]
Global distributed users-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Architecture advice: For globally distributed cross-border businesses, don't try to solve all problems with just one region. The best practice is to deploy the core application service and the main database in Singapore or Tokyo, cooperate with Amazon CloudFront (Content Delivery Network) on the front end, and use AWS's global edge nodes to accelerate static resources and API requests to achieve the best balance between performance and cost.
Summary
There is no absolute "fastest" region, only the node that best suits your business scenario.
Southeast Asia to look for Singapore;
East Asia and Europe and the United States linkage priority Tokyo;
Combined with domestic supply chain system priority Hong Kong.
After clarifying the business scenario, combined with CDN acceleration and
AWS Recharge
and other cost control strategies to maximize the IT input-output ratio while ensuring the ultimate experience for global users.
