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Best case you have to do three RTs for a full SSL handshake (without false start anyway), so a RTT of 300ms will bring you pretty close to that 1000ms. We (github.com) certainly have average 1000ms SSL handshakes in Asia -- we're 5 RTs for an SSL handshake presently. It's extremely annoying.

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Sure, I manage servers in the US, Japan and Australia so I'm well acquainted with how latency sucks. I was questioning the idea that there was a possibility of "an extra 100-1000 millisecond trip each way" - Taken literally, this would mean up to a 2000ms RTT (1000 ms each way). I get ~230ms RTT between Sydney and NYC, and 320 from Sydney to Hamburg going around the wrong way. for reference, 2000 ms is 74% of the RTT to the moon.

Oh, I would argue that latency often has no correlation to distance.

When you're talking about SSL handshakes, where else is the latency going to come from?

Poor hardware.

http://www.stuartcheshire.org/rants/Latency.html

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