What latency to expect from France, Belgium and Switzerland
"Low-latency servers", "optimised ping", "premium network": every host writes it, almost none gives a figure you can check. Here's what actually determines your latency, and why we don't publish a number we haven't measured.
What makes up ping, in order of weight
- Physical distance. A signal doesn't travel faster than light in fibre. Between Paris and Brussels the irreducible round trip is a few milliseconds; between Paris and Montreal, tens of them.
- The number of hops. Every router crossed adds its own delay. Two servers at equal distance can have very different pings depending on the route traffic takes between carriers.
- Your last mile. Often the dominant term, and the one a host has no control over: Wi-Fi easily adds more latency than crossing the country on fibre.
- Server load. A server failing to hold its tick feels like high ping when the network is perfectly fine — that's the subject of our TPS vs FPS article.
Where our machines are
Our servers are hosted in France, on our own hardware, behind a business fibre line. For a player in France, Belgium, Luxembourg or Switzerland the distance is short, and it isn't what will limit your game.
From Quebec, crossing the Atlantic adds latency nobody can remove. Minecraft stays very playable under those conditions — it isn't a competitive shooter — but we'd rather say so plainly than let you assume otherwise.
Why we publish no figure
Because an average number means nothing. Your latency depends on your ISP, your Wi-Fi, the time of day and the route your traffic takes — four things we neither control nor can measure on your behalf.
Advertising "under 10 ms" would be easy to write and impossible to honour for everyone. We prefer not to promise what we can't demonstrate, which also goes for our status page: it's public, hosted elsewhere, and its history stays visible even when it isn't flattering.
Measure it yourself
The only measurement that counts is yours. In Minecraft, the connection bar next to each
player in the list (Tab key) shows their real ping; hovering over your server
in the multiplayer list gives you the same information before you even connect.
It's also a good reason to try before committing: an order can be refunded within 48 hours, no justification needed — time enough to measure your real ping. Plans are on the pricing page.