VPN server in Australia: the Sydney exit server

The exit offers two things: an Australian address, and a domestic path to services hosted in Australia. Sydney is home to data centres of several large cloud platforms, so systems hosted there sit close to the end of the tunnel.

Every 100 km between you and the exit adds at least 1 ms to each round trip. A signal in glass fibre moves at about two-thirds of the speed of light in a vacuum, roughly 200 km per millisecond, and the reply has to cover the same distance back. Real cables are longer than the great-circle line and every router adds delay, so a measured figure always sits above that floor.

Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane are the three capitals nearest the exit, at 250, 710 and 730 km, so their floors are 2.5, 7.1 and 7.3 ms.

Hobart and Adelaide are further away, at 1,050 and 1,150 km, which gives floors of 10.5 and 11.5 ms. Cairns, in far north Queensland, is 1,950 km from the exit, a floor of 19.5 ms.

Darwin and Perth are on another scale: 3,150 and 3,300 km from Sydney, floors of 31.5 and 33 ms, both further than Auckland is from the exit.

On a great circle, Perth and Darwin are closer to Jakarta than to Sydney. Perth is 3,000 km from Jakarta and 3,300 km from Sydney; Darwin is 2,700 km from Jakarta and 3,150 km from Sydney. Singapore is further than Jakarta from both, at 3,900 km from Perth and 3,350 km from Darwin.

The floors differ by 3 ms for Perth (30 against 33 ms) and 4.5 ms for Darwin (27 against 31.5 ms), and real routes can outweigh margins of that size. Traffic follows cables, not great circles. Perth is a landing point for submarine cables to Singapore, Sydney for cables across the Pacific, and domestic fibre links Perth and Darwin to the rest of Australia. Which of those paths your provider uses decides the real figure.

A Jakarta exit also has a cost that no latency figure shows. It gives websites an Indonesian address, so pages may switch to Indonesian and prices to rupiah, and an Australian service sees a sign-in from abroad.

From Perth or Darwin, use Sydney for Australian services. When the destinations are in Asia, compare Sydney, Jakarta and Singapore in the server list.

Across the Tasman Sea, Auckland is 2,150 km from Sydney and Wellington 2,250 km. With a floor of about 22 ms, a reader in New Zealand who wants an Australian address pays little for it.

Several trans-Pacific submarine cables come ashore in and around Sydney, and the crossing they make is long. Honolulu is 8,150 km from Sydney (81.5 ms), San Francisco 11,950 km and Los Angeles 12,050 km, floors of about 120 ms.

For an Australian in California, every round trip through Sydney therefore has a floor of about 120 ms. An Australian service needs that crossing anyway; an American site reached through Sydney needs it twice, a floor of about 240 ms. In the other direction, no exit removes the ocean for a reader in Australia using services in the United States: with Sydney it is crossed after the tunnel, and with an exit in the United States it is crossed inside it.

Asia is closer than the United States, but still distant: Jakarta is 5,500 km from Sydney, Singapore 6,300 km and Tokyo 7,850 km, floors of 55, 63 and 78.5 ms. An Australian in Japan pays 78.5 ms of floor on every round trip through Sydney, so the Tokyo exit suits everything that does not need an Australian address.

An Australian address moves many sites onto their Australian versions. Prices tend to appear in Australian dollars, dates are written day first, search results lean towards Australian sites, and the spelling is Australian, which follows British forms such as colour and centre.

Where a site sets its clock from the address rather than from your device, it will usually show Sydney time. New South Wales observes daylight saving and Queensland does not, so while it is in force a reader in Brisbane sees times an hour ahead of the local clock. Perth is two hours behind Sydney in winter and three hours behind while New South Wales observes daylight saving. Sites that take the time zone from your device show the local time correctly.

Content delivery networks and software mirrors choose the copy they serve by where a request appears to come from. Through Sydney that is usually a copy in Australia, which suits readers in Australia and New Zealand and adds distance for an Australian connecting from Europe or the Americas.

Long stays in Australia, such as working holidays, commonly involve hostels and share houses, where one Wi-Fi password is given to every guest or housemate. Everyone with that password is on the same network as your devices.

Many public libraries, cafés and airports, and some city centres, offer free Wi-Fi, often behind a sign-in page. Finish the sign-in before starting the tunnel: the page appears only when the network can intercept an ordinary web request, which an active tunnel prevents. If the page returns later, disconnect, sign in again and reconnect. If Auto-Connect is on, an iPhone or iPad can start the tunnel again on Wi-Fi after a disconnect, so pause it instead while you sign in.

A tunnel encrypts what your device sends; it does not make the device invisible to others on a hostel network. Turn off file sharing and device discovery as well.

The plan can follow the length of the stay. The weekly plan costs $1.99 and suits a short visit, and beyond two weeks the monthly plan at $3.99 costs less. Both renew until you cancel them in the store's subscription settings, and access continues to the end of the paid period. WrapVPN has no annual plan.

A connection through Sydney passes three parties, and WrapVPN keeps records about it as well. Each sees or keeps something different.