GeoServer Slowly Requests to Remote DB

Question

I need someone who's good at GeoServer & Networks to help me figure out what I'm missing here.

I have two servers, one for database (S1) and the other one for my web app & GeoServer (S2). Both inside network A. Application works fine on S2. Retrieving WMS and GWC layers from S1 through GeoServer [http://privateIP:8081/geoserver/wms] and [http://privateIP:8081/geoserver/gwc/service/wms]

Now, I would like to take S2 out of Network A. So I disconnected it and plugged it again to a 4G internet modem. Then changed GeoServer stores IP addresses to public IP of S1, and Layers requests to the public IP address as well: [http://publicIP:8081/geoserver/wms] and and [http://publicIP:8081/geoserver/gwc/service/wms]

At this point, requesting layers became so unbelievably slow. I can see few tiles of the layers but it takes too long to load then failed with no result but pink tiles.

I couldn't figure out what causes this. Is it rough for GeoServer to request from a remote database? and what is the suggested solution in this case?

Answer 1

You are asking GeoServer to pull all of the vector data needed to draw the map (which could be a lot) over a slow network for every tile it draws. This is unlikely to ever be fast enough to be useable.

If this was me I would set up a system something like:

DBServer
GeoServer 
GeoWebCache

Network

cascading GeoServer
GeoWebCache
Users

To avoid sending too much data over the 4G link.