After moving to Unicom, the US nodes aren't as good anymore.
I recently moved, and the broadband at my place switched from China Telecom to Unicom. Usually, when I watch dramas or play games, I don’t feel any noticeable difference. It wasn’t until a couple of days ago that I tried to download some materials and habitually switched to the US node, but no matter what, the speed wouldn’t go up. I was a bit dumbfounded at the time.
I figured this out later. I used to think that because the bandwidth in US data centers was sufficient, the US nodes were naturally stronger. Now I see that this understanding is only half right. Having ample server resources in the US is one thing; which broadband provider to use domestically, how the international exit path works, and whether the return trip benefits from better backbone connections are the other half. Issues that weren’t exposed when I used Telecom were all revealed after switching to Unicom.