Workflow latency

Hi guys,

As I’ve tried Losant for a few days now, I have some questions regarding latencies. I’ve created a simple Python program that connects to Losant as a device, and then sends a ping that is returned through a workflow. I often get quite consistent +/- 200 ms delays, but with regular peaks, some over a second.

Are these delays ‘normal’, does Losant want to be faster than this? Is it a goal to be able to use Losant for (almost) real-time applications?

Maybe this has to do something with my developer account, do the paid accounts get faster servers? Or maybe it’s due to me being in Europe (I believe you guys are across the pond?) ?

Thanks in advance,

Han

As you suspect, a good amount of that is almost certainly due to just plain old network latency back and forth from US to Europe, since we only have servers in the US. Pure ping time is probably 150ms latency, so at a minimum you have that on the message coming into Losant, as well as the reply. There is also, of course, latency internal to our system, involved in the message coming in, processing that message, and the message replying - and of course the time to run the workflow itself.

So I doubt that you would be able to get real-time unless we had a Losant deployment in Europe. And even then, the variability of the internet can be problematic - which is why we are actually currently developing our “Edge” solution for workflows. This will allow our workflows to be deployed and run on edge gateways, allowing true real-time command and control.