The myth that the edge makes TLS slow

The myth that the edge makes TLS slow
A Buenos Aires fintech delayed enabling HTTP/2 and TLS 1.3 at the edge, repeating the old line that encryption adds latency. Their handshakes to a distant origin were costing 300ms per connection.
The myth: TLS slows you down, terminate it close to origin. The reality: the slow part is the round trips, and terminating TLS far from the user is exactly what hurts.
What we changed: we terminated TLS 1.3 at the local edge node 8ms from users, enabled session resumption and HTTP/2 multiplexing, and kept a persistent warm tunnel to origin.
Result: handshake cost in Buenos Aires fell from 300ms to 22ms, and full page connect time dropped by 60%.
Modern TLS at the edge is faster than no edge. Distance is the tax, not the cipher.
The number that mattered: 22ms handshakes, down from 300.