The geographic region of your Custom Domain, and its associated Dedicated IPs, are determined by the region for the top-level folder of your Files.com site.

When using a custom domain, if you change the primary region where files are hosted on your Files.com site, the region of your Custom Domain will also change and we will issue you new IP addresses in the new region and release your old IP addresses.

Performance Implications

Implementing a Custom Domain, along with the associated Dedicated IPs, can have performance implications on the transmission speed of international file transfers.

Files.com provides global acceleration features to minimize the network distance between users and regional storage. These features are circumvented when a Custom Domain is implemented in a different region than your storage region, meaning that file transfer durations will take longer than usual.

To maintain performance, we strongly recommend that your Custom Domain is implemented in the same region as your storage.

For global customers, all global users will be routed through the region of your Custom Domain and its Dedicated IPs. For example, if your Custom Domain is in Europe then all file transfers will be routed through Europe on their way to their final destination. This also applies to transfers to your Regional Storage. For example, if your Custom Domain is in Europe, and you have a folder that is stored in Singapore, then all file transfers to the Singapore folder will travel through Europe, even if they originate from Singapore itself.

Mitigating Connection Disruption from IP Changes

Changing your site's primary region initiates a process where your dedicated IP addresses will change. The new IP addresses are not known prior to the change because they are assigned at the time your region changes. As a result, you cannot predict what your new dedicated IP addresses will be when you make this type of switch.

The switch of IP addresses relies upon DNS propagation, and the process starts as soon as you save the new setting. If you have followed the recommendations for low TTLs, this is a very quick process taking no more than a minute or two.

For your partners who connect using domain names rather than IP addresses can expect no disruption.

When your partners rely upon IP whitelists to connect with your site, communicate early and proactively about a planned change. Let everyone concerned know the time that you are planning to perform the switchover and decide in advance how the new dedicated IPs will be published to them. Provide a way for your partners to contact you if any problems arise. Create a checklist or testing plan and follow up with each partner as needed.