Geo steering LB with cloudflare proxy enabled not helping to reduce latency

[cnp0991]

What is the name of the domain?

ogdb.link

What is the issue you’re encountering

geo steering LB with cloudflare proxy enabled not helping to reduce latency

What steps have you taken to resolve the issue?

I thought to enable geo steering for my domain to reduce latency based on geo location.
So I enabled load balancing with geo steering mentioned at Geo steering · Cloudflare Load Balancing docs

Without cloudflare proxy it works fine, HTTP request get served by nearest endpoint and can see reduced latency.
But when cloudflare proxy is enabled, HTTP request goes through cloudflare proxy server, which is far away from end user and hence don’t see reduction in latency.

First I am targeting to reduce latency for users in India. But with proxy enabled, for request from India, it reaches to cloudflare proxy located in either Germany or Frankfurt and then it reaches to my domain endpoint.

I am not sure whether this is expected or not.
Does this mean geo steering load balancing is not helpful with cloudflare proxy enabled?

[malmeida]

Hi @cnp0991,

Thank you for raising this question.

Due to the way routing in the country works, some requests are sent to data center locations (colo) that are not necessarily the closest geographically. For example, if we do not have a peering relationship with your network provider or if that cache location is under heavier load, we may manually route our self-service plans to other datacenters.

Most of the requests are sent to the physically closest cache location, but some requests are sent to nearby ones that are under a lower capacity.

One last note to say that the Enterprise plan allows customers to guarantee their zones are always served by the closest geographic colo and the highest priority of traffic.

I hope this helps, but please let us know if you need further assistance.

[cnp0991]

Thanks for information.