DETOURIs your connection leaving Taiwan?

Testing. Tracing your connection…

Testing
You are in···
Lands in···
Distance
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Latency (RTT)
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Your network
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Latency (RTT)
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Taiwan node
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Live from Taiwan

ISPMost common nodeMedian RTT
Chunghwa Telecom (HiNet)SJCSan Jose71%141 ms
Chunghwa Telecom MobileSINSingapore74%112 ms
Taiwan MobileSmall sampleTPETaipei100%40 ms
Far EasToneSmall sampleNRTTokyo57%72 ms
kbroSmall sampleTPETaipei92%25 ms
DaDa BroadbandSmall sampleTPETaipei100%13 ms
  • Taiwan
  • Nearby
  • Far away
Read the full report

Why does this happen?

  1. The web is a string of round trips

    Request →← ResponseYouWebsite

    Each time you open a page, your browser sends requests and waits for the replies. A typical page makes dozens of them, and many can't start until an earlier one has come back. Once it has loaded, every click, scroll and keystroke is another exchange with a server. So how long one round trip takes decides how fast the web feels.

  2. The reply usually comes from Cloudflare, not the website

    YouCloudflareOrigin website

    Close to 30% of all websites are served through Cloudflare, which provides security, caching and edge computing. When you visit one of them, you are really connecting to a Cloudflare data center: the nearest one answers directly, or fetches the content from the site for you.

    Cloudflare has data centers in Taipei and Kaohsiung, so your requests should be answered inside Taiwan. But…

  3. Which data center you reach depends on where your ISP connects to Cloudflare

    Normal routeabout 10 msexample figure

    PacificCloudflareLos AngelesYouISPCloudflareTaipeiInterconnect in Taiwan

    Detour routeabout 150 msexample figure

    PacificInterconnect in Los AngelesYouISPCloudflareTaipeiCloudflareLos AngelesNo interconnect in Taiwan

    All of Cloudflare's data centers share the same IP addresses. Which one your request ends up at depends on how your internet provider (ISP) routes it, and an ISP can only hand traffic over where it has a direct connection with Cloudflare.

    If your ISP and Cloudflare don't interconnect in Taiwan, or don't let ordinary traffic use that link, the request leaves the country first, is handed to Cloudflare in the US or elsewhere, and the reply travels all the way back to Taiwan.

  4. The detour costs something on every single trip

    • Every round trip gets slower

      Taipei to Los Angeles is about 10,000 km. Even at the speed of light in fiber, a round trip takes at least 0.1 seconds; landing in Taiwan usually takes a few milliseconds. A page needs dozens of round trips, and that adds up to the "why is this so slow" you feel.

    • A site in Taiwan, across the Pacific twice

      Many Taiwanese sites keep their servers in Taiwan or elsewhere in Asia. Requests that need the site itself, like logging in, checking out or searching, have to be passed on by Cloudflare. So your request flies to the US, then back to Taiwan to reach the server, and the reply retraces the whole route: something that could stay on the island crosses the Pacific twice.

    • Americans get Taiwanese sites faster than you

      Cloudflare keeps copies of site content in data centers around the world. A visitor in the US gets a Taiwanese site from a data center nearby; you, in Taiwan, have to fetch it from the US too. The same Taiwanese site is slower for people in Taiwan.

    • Everyone squeezes onto the same undersea cables

      Traffic sent abroad has to share limited international submarine cable capacity. The evening peak congests it most; congestion drops packets, every dropped packet is sent again, and every resend crosses the Pacific once more. Downloading large files or watching video, you feel it as stalls and lower quality.

    • Small companies lose out to big ones

      Cloudflare's routing priority is reserved for its top enterprise tier, at least US$3,000 a month depending on traffic. Large companies that can pay are served via Taipei; startups, small shops and personal sites that can't are sent the long way. In the same market, speed is unequal from the start.

    • Giving up protection for speed

      Cloudflare doesn't only speed sites up. It blocks DDoS attacks, filters malicious traffic and bots, and hides a site's real server address. The detour forces sites to choose whether to give that protection up and face the internet directly so their users connect faster. The speed comes back, and the protection goes with it.

What you can do

Our ask: Chunghwa Telecom and Cloudflare should interconnect directly in Taiwan, or route traffic to nearby Asian data centers, so people in Taiwan don't have to put up with high-latency connections.

Tell your ISP (template in Chinese)

您好，根據「網路出國了嗎」（detour.tw）的公開統計，近 30 天中華電信 HiNet 用戶連往 Cloudflare 網站的測試中，有 100% 落在台灣以外的機房。希望貴公司能與 Cloudflare 在台灣建立直接互連，改善連線品質。謝謝。

Chunghwa Telecom

Write to the regulators (template in Chinese)

您好，根據「網路出國了嗎」的公開統計（https://detour.tw/stats ），近 30 天中華電信 HiNet 用戶連往 Cloudflare 網站的測試中，有 100% 落在台灣以外的機房。希望主管機關了解這個情況，協助電信業者與 Cloudflare 在台灣直接互連。謝謝。

NCCMinistry of Digital Affairs

Tell Cloudflare

Hello. According to public measurements collected by detour.tw (https://detour.tw/en/stats), 100% of tests from Chunghwa Telecom (HiNet) users in Taiwan over the last 30 days reached sites on Cloudflare through a data center outside Taiwan. I would like to ask Cloudflare to interconnect directly with Chunghwa Telecom in Taiwan so that this traffic can be served locally. Thank you.

Cloudflare