%% Last Updated: - [[2021-04-01]] %% The geographical location of your load test generators affects the response time you’ll get. If you use on-premises machines to generate the load and see 1-second response times, the machines are on the same corporate network as your application servers and have less latency. This means that the response times will be a lot faster than those of a client using your application from across the world. Depending on where your customers live, latency can change the reported response time. In general, you would want to have a look at your analytics and see where most of your customer base is. Ideally, you’d want to generate load in those regions— remember, we’re trying to make your load testing as realistic as possible. This is one big reason to switch from on-premises load generators to load generators in the cloud. Service providers like [Amazon](http://aws.com), [Azure](http://azure.com) and [Google](http://cloud.google.com) allow you to provision machines with a few clicks and even select their location. Load testing on the cloud can be significantly cheaper (because you don’t have to provision or maintain physical machines and you only pay for when you use them) and more realistic, because they allow you to approximate the effect of distance on your application response times. It also allows you to test the effect of [[Content Distribution Networks]](CDNs), if you’re using any. ## Related - [[Load Testing]] - [[Performance Testing]] - [[Workload Modeling]]