Does Ec2 Have Good Latency?

For keeping a website with significant traffic, how good is the latency on Amazon EC2? I have heard that it is slow for websites and web apps. Is this true?

Solution 1:

In my experience it can be slow and it does vary considerably even between sequential requests in quick succession.

Solution 2:

If by latency you mean delays in processing browser requests it's likely that the instance the web server is running on is under powered.

I run VoIP apps on EC2 and the latency on those is fine, users kick and scream a lot more if their phone calls are delayed than they do if their web is slow. I did have to switch from an m1.small to a c1.medium intance type recently when things did start slowing down a bit.