What latency do you expect when serving static files?

Question

I'm running some latency measurements using Web Page Speed Test on a static javascript file. I compared hosting the file at four locations: Host Monster, Amazon S3, Amazon Cloudfront, and Heroku Static Sites.

The results I'm getting are around 240ms-390ms, the worst being Host Monster. The tests were run from the default Web Page Speed Test data center at Dulles, VA, USA. The S3 zone I used was "US standard".

My question is - isn't 240ms+ latency a bit too much for just serving a javascript file (33kb minified before gzip - Host Monster and Heroku have out-of-the-box gzip, it's a bit less seamless for Amazon Web Services do not so I didn't enable it for this test). What top latency should I expect when serving a static 30kb file from the US to the US?

How can we to the sub 100ms latency zone?

Edit

Here is a sample latency breakdown from Web Page Speed Test on Amazon CloudFront:

DNS Lookup: 49 ms
Initial Connection: 59 ms
Time to First Byte: 123 ms
Content Download: 28 ms

Answer 1

i can clearly say that the website you are using is not accurate. use firefox install firebug and test the speed yourself. i live in Turkey and the file i am downloading from USA took total 173 ms. you can delete all history cached data for more accuracy. i used my own host for test. file downloaded first time.

Answer 2

I think the issue was with me using the default setting on Web Page Speed Test. Try using FIOS under Connection Settings to get a more real measurement.