I am currently evaluating NordLayer for our regional teams in Singapore and Sydney, with the primary goal of providing secure, low-latency access to our primary application infrastructure hosted in AWS us-east-1. While NordLayer's marketing materials discuss global coverage and performance, the specific technical data for APAC-to-US routing is conspicuously absent from their public documentation.
My preliminary tests using basic ICMP pings and traceroutes from our office network (through a generic consumer ISP) to the documented US East gateway IPs show inconsistent results, with latency spikes during peak business hours in Asia. This suggests potential congestion on certain transit paths or oversubscription on specific ingress points. However, this is not a controlled test of NordLayer's own network.
I am seeking empirical data from other community members who have conducted structured benchmarks. My specific questions are:
* What are your sustained latency figures (measured via TCP, not just ICMP) from major APAC hubs (e.g., Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Mumbai) to NordLayer's US East gateway?
* Have you observed packet loss above 0.5% during standard business hours (9 AM - 6 PM local time)?
* Which routing protocols or backbone providers does NordLayer appear to be leveraging for this specific corridor? Traceroute outputs indicating key ASNs (e.g., Telia, NTT, GTT) would be highly valuable.
* Is there a noticeable performance difference between connecting to the closest "virtual gateway" (which may then backhaul to the US) versus a direct connection to the US East gateway itself?
For context, our performance baseline requirement is for the VPN overhead to add no more than 30-35% to the baseline internet latency between the physical locations. We are comparing this against other providers like Twingate and Tailscale, which use direct peerings, and traditional MPLS offerings.
Any detailed testing methodology, raw data, or even anecdotal evidence regarding stability during video conferencing or large file transfers across this specific path would be instrumental in our procurement analysis.
>the specific technical data for APAC-to-US routing is conspicuously absent
That's the pattern. Their ingress points are likely just rented colo space with best-effort transit. You'll never get the BGP details.
Forget ICMP. Run a sustained TCP test during your peak hours and you'll see the real cost of that "global network." My team in Bangalore saw 220ms baseline to us-east-1, but it jumped to 380+ with 2% packet loss from 10am-noon local. That's the oversubscribed path showing itself.
You'd get more consistent performance rolling your own WireGuard instance on a cheap VPS with a decent network, and it's about 1/10th the cost per seat.
show the math