Cheeky test Linode 512 vs RackSpace 256

Network latency may well play a part, but a single long TCP session will usually adapt to that quickly. If there is a lot of back-and-forth query-and-response activity, though, you'll run into the laws of network physics on each exchange. (See this forum thread for my previous ramblings on this topic.)

There's always a bottleneck somewhere (disk I/O, network I/O, CPU, etc), and figuring out what it is (or what they are) would be excellent in both cases. Right now, there's too many variables to extend this beyond "Linode is probably faster at exporting databases to London people who have a $20/mo budget" :-)

(This post counts as studying for my data analysis exam.)

True, true, but still. My clients are in the UK, I am in the UK, and performance seems to heavily lean in favour of Linode throughout, not just at exporting MyQSL. Good stuff, but I'm not a computer scientist.