Is your 'Bare EC2' over SSL? I've used Apex Ping as well (btw it runs on Lambda), and it seems they open a new connection on each ping.

Getting 15 ms latency on a brand new TLS connection is nearly impossible over the internet. If you actually check the latency breakdown on your Ping, you'll see the TLS handshake is dominating the API Gateway -> EC2 request.

I'm all for this type of analysis, but too often it isn't apples to apples.

You're right, and I agree it isn't apples to apples. I am still looking for ways to break the 150ms TLS handshake barrier (let me know if you have)

My intention was merely to point out the difference between bare/raw HTTP on ec2 vs API Gateway (which is only HTTPS).

But this comparison is in fact almost useless because the world is moving to HTTPS everywhere.

(almost instead of completely useless) because there's still a ~50ms Lambda penalty

This was in response to TJ Holowaychuk's blog post: "Blueprints for up" https://medium.com/@tjholowaychuk/blueprints-for-up-1-5f8197... (running express/connect as a child process of Lambda)

and curiosity as to how far Lambda is from being used for anything latency sensitive - but it turns out Lambda isn't the slow part - it's API Gateway.