# Kafka performance: Network

This tutorial explains to you the impact of the Network on the Kafka server performance.

Here are some information to retain about the impact of the network on Kafka cluster performance:

• The network could be your bottleneck

• Use low latency network : You should avoid clusters that span multiple data centers, even if the data centers are collocated in proximity; and avoid clusters that span large geographic distances. Kafka clusters assume that all nodes are equal. Larger latencies can exacerbate problems in distributed systems and make debugging and resolution more difficult.

• Use a network with a large bandwidth : in order to handle a lot of traffic/ connections. Modern data-center networking (1 GbE, 10 GbE) is sufficient for the vast majority of clusters.

• Monitor network usage to understand when the network becomes a bottleneck.