Is Edge Colocation Really Faster? Debunking Latency Myths

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Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) acts as the central routing system of the internet, but it was architected for administrative survivability rather than microsecond efficiency. Standard BGP calculates best-path decisions using Autonomous System (AS) path length, a metric that counts network hops between organizations rather than physical distance, line quality, or packet delay.

A BGP path with an AS-hop count of two might direct enterprise traffic across a congested trans-continental circuit, while a three-hop path sits completely idle with half the round-trip latency. Default BGP routers cannot see this difference. They continue forwarding packets down the longer, degraded path until actual link failure triggers a route change.

Modern colocation engineering counters this by pairing redundant multi-homed upstreams with real-time BGP route optimization platforms. These systems continuously measure external paths by sending synthetic probe packets and monitoring live flow data for packet loss, latency drift, and path jitter. When an upstream provider exhibits degraded throughput or route flapping, the controller automatically injects localized BGP communities or rewrites local preference tables. Traffic routes around carrier congestion before human monitoring systems even register a problem.