Friends in several countries: where to host the server

⚡ The short answer

Put the server close to where most of the group plays. The further a player is from the server, the longer every action takes to travel there and back, and neither a more powerful server nor a faster connection fixes that. If your group is spread across several countries, no location suits everyone: you choose who gets the better deal, and it helps to choose knowing why.

📡 Why distance matters

Every time you move, break a block or fire a shot, your game tells the server and waits for the reply. The time that round trip takes is latency, which the game shows as ping. It depends mostly on two things:

• Distance. Data travels through cables, and crossing an ocean takes longer than crossing a country.
• The route. Data doesn't travel in a straight line: it passes through several providers' networks and sometimes takes a detour. Two neighbours on different providers can have different latency to the same server.

Paying for more megabits helps you download faster, not shorten that trip.

🐢 Distance delay and a slow server are not the same thing

It's worth telling them apart, because the fixes are different.

What happens	Likely cause	What helps
Only the player who lives far away is delayed	Latency: distance or route	Moving the server closer to that player
It's slow for everyone at once	The server can't keep up	Less load or more resources
It hits one player, now and then	Their own connection	A cable instead of Wi-Fi, and nothing downloading

In Minecraft, for example, the server is built to process 20 ticks per second; when it can't, everyone feels it equally, wherever they live. To tell which one you have, see understanding the panel's CPU and RAM metrics.

🗺️ What a server in São Paulo means

ZentexNode has servers in two places: Spain and Brazil (São Paulo). A server in São Paulo means that data from players in Brazil and the neighbouring countries makes a much shorter trip than it would crossing the Atlantic to Europe. For players in Spain or Portugal it's the other way round.

As a rough guide, with no promises, because every provider routes differently:

• Group in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay or Chile: São Paulo is the logical starting point.
• Group in Spain, Portugal or the rest of Europe: Spain.
• Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and northern South America: it isn't obvious. They are far from both locations and the route matters more than the map: here you need to test.

🌎 A group split between the Americas and Europe

This is the hard case, and there's no trick. Three honest criteria:

• Where most players are. With five in Argentina and one in Madrid, the server goes to São Paulo and the player in Madrid lives with a bit more delay.
• Where it hurts most. In a relaxed survival world, building with some delay is tolerable. In PvP or shooters it shows far more: if the competitive players are on one side, put the server on that side.
• Where people actually play. With the time difference, usually only part of the group overlaps. Look at who is online at the hours you play.

🧪 How to check

• In Minecraft, the player list (Tab key) shows connection bars next to each name: the more bars filled, the lower the latency. Have everyone check their own at the time they usually play.
• Go by what each player sees, not by a single test run by whoever manages the server.
• If the location doesn't work out, the world can move to another server: you download it and upload it again, as explained in how to upload your existing world to the server.

ZentexNode has no minimum term: you pay month to month, so the first month works as a real test with your group. If you can't decide between the two locations, ask through a ticket on Discord before ordering.

And if part of the group plays on a phone, that's a separate question, answered in how to play from a phone and a PC on the same server.