Cloud Computing Latency: What You Need to Know
Cloud computing is the talk of the town. What is all the buzz about? Cloud computing provides companies the ability to quickly and cost effectively deploy new hardware, storage and software solutions. Cloud Computing avoids the need to utilize large capital budget investments to introduce new applications and solutions to the Enterprise, but latency can have a huge impact on distributed networks and cloud computing, making it incredibly difficult to deploy new hardware and software solutions.
Moving the applications and infrastructure to the cloud makes them available from any device – providing the ability to work anywhere anytime and have full access to the entire infrastructure required.
Issues With Cloud Computing
With all the good news about cloud computing what are the issues? The number one issue is latency. What is latency? It is the time it takes for a signal to travel from one point to another in telecom networks. Businesses’ increased reliance on telecom networks and improved processing speeds for computer networks and the Local Area Networks (LANs)/Wide Area Networks (WANs) that interconnect them, have combined to make the speed at which a signal travels in a telecom network more noticeable and critical. Technologies such as cloud computing cannot be successful if the end user does not have a good experience.
Applications which are most susceptible to latency are those which depend most heavily on high transaction rate processes which drive CPU per second cycles, memory and storage read/write requests, and server requests. Examples of latency sensitive applications range from multimedia streaming, video transcoding, multi-player network gaming to telesurgery and computerized trading. CIOs operating private clouds as well as large cloud service providers need a flexible and robust network architecture that reduces latency to acceptable levels for their particular application.
What is the Future of Cloud Computing and Distributed Networks
Cloud computing networks are moving away from the typical three-layer switching topology in which access switches are connected to a large pool of aggregation or distribution switches that are then connected to the core. The concern with the traditional model is latency — it forces packets to stop at hops at every layer and doesn’t provide any-to-any communication between the hundreds of servers and migrating VMs (virtual machines) necessary in a cloud environment.
It is expected that, over time, enterprises will build cloud networks with a distribution layer of 10 GbE switches (and ultimately 40 GbE and 100 GbE once these standards are approved) that is flattened or broadened out, becoming the communication link between servers with as few blocks as possible. This middle layer of Ethernet switches will be built as a larger fabric so that enterprises can manage them as one or a couple of large switches.
How to Reduce Latency in Cloud Computing
How do you choose the correct connectivity that will take into account all of these latency variables? You want to go with a partner that has a reputation for managing latency and has always designed on layer 1 transport. Apcela has been established as the low latency leader in the financial services electronic trading market. Where a millisecond of latency can mean the difference of a million dollars, gaining a reputation as the low latency leader provides Apcela unprecedented credibility. Apcela Global Low Latency Exchange Infrastructure separates itself from other networks because Apcela is a not a carrier. Apcela has built a custom “community” Trading Cloud on this infrastructure which enables many major trading firms to compete at the speed of light. The network performance demands in this type of environment are unrivaled by most enterprise cloud requirement.
Apcela is carrier neutral provider who designs and implements low latency networks. Apcela understands all the variables and components of latency and has optimized their Global Low Latency Exchange Infrastructure to reduce any undue latency. Take advantage of the network that is supporting major banks and trading firms for your cloud computing. Hit the ground running by partnering with Apcela and take advantage of COATS – Cloud Optimized Access and Transport Services and their already optimized Global Low Latency Exchange Infrastructure and ensure you have the reach and low latency required to support your cloud strategy.
