Is there any possibility that linode would acquire servers at an European datacenter, so we could choose to have our linodes in Europe?

I have had my linode for some years now, and I am quite happy with the service. The only downside is that as a Danish citizen the datacenters are far away, and ssh can be a bit annoying after a while with the delay it causes.

I have looked a several European alternatives to linode, but non has all the good features/service that I enjoy at linode. I think I am sticking with linode for now, but having a datacenter in Europe would really be a big plus.

I'm a european user too (Luxembourg) and have some experience with european providers - I just don't see that much of a difference in responsiveness. There's a provider in walking distance from where I sit that pinging takes longer than to my linode.

I'd welcome a european datacenter as well, but for other, political reasons - I just don't trust W and his team one bit to not spy on my data. On the other hand caker and team have my trust and support. I can see that they wouldn't want to set up shop in .eu for legal, language and a bunch of other reasons.

Asia too. I have a Hong Kong VPS which is more expensive, slower, and generally more limited than a Linode. Unfortunately bandwidth is non-existent here, every service provider has to now advertise unlimited bandwidth because they cannot guarantee any amount to justify metered charging.

I see a very clear jump in ping time when my trace crosses the Atlantic . Here is a part of a traceroute from my home and to my linode:

 7:  se-fre.nordu.net (193.10.68.117)                     asymm  8  16.999ms 
 8:  s-b3-link.telia.net (213.248.97.17)                  asymm 12  21.037ms 
 9:  globalcrossing-114204-s-b3.telia.net (213.248.78.10) asymm 16  41.032ms 
10:  ge8-1-10G.ar2.DAL2.gblx.net (67.17.108.10)           asymm 19 169.980ms 
11:  The-Planet.GigabitEthernet7-3.ar2.DAL2.gblx.net (64.208.170.198) asymm 20 197.524ms

I assume that the delay between number 9 and 10 is the delay over the Atlantic. That is 120 ms out of a total delay of about 200 ms. Pinging popular danish websites server's usually gives a delay between 10 and 80 ms. Even most European servers is in the same range.

200 ms might not sound like a lot, but it is enough that you notice it when you are used to 1/5 of that or lower, and it gets a bit strenuous after a while. But it could just be that I have a habit of doing coding and other daily tasks directly on my server.

Do not take this as critics, it is just a really nice to have feature request. ;)

Heh, from my Verizon FIOS (NJ) connection, ping times to my linode in Freemont...

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 98.066/98.595/99.397/0.542 ms, pipe 2

However, if I ping a "shared owned" server in Amsterdam from the same FIOS connection:

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 89.702/90.283/91.091/0.619 ms, pipe 2

So it's actually quicker for me to ping Amsterdam than Freemont!

Compared to pinging my Panix V-Colo in New York...

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 12.163/14.896/20.443/2.879 ms, pipe 2

Wow, look at the slowdown in HE network:

 6  10gigabitethernet1-3.core1.ash1.he.net (209.51.161.33)  22.864 ms  24.003 ms  24.997 ms
 7  10gigabitethernet1-4.core1.pao1.he.net (72.52.92.29)  97.862 ms  99.353 ms 97.148 ms

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)