A TCP check from Romania attempts a handshake to your host on a specified port from our Bucharest and Bacău nodes and reports connection time. From Bucharest (FlokiNET, AS200651), TCP connect times to Sofia-hosted servers are around 15 ms, to Frankfurt 40–48 ms, and to London 55–65 ms. Bacău (Telesystem, AS214062) may show slightly different times depending on its transit path. These figures represent what Romanian users actually experience connecting to your service.

Romanian ISPs do not commonly filter outbound ports on commercial datacenter connections. Both FlokiNET and Telesystem operate with standard datacenter-grade port policies. If a TCP check from Romania fails while other EU nodes succeed, the most likely causes are: the destination has a firewall rule blocking one of the source ASNs (AS200651 or AS214062), there is a geo-block applied to Romanian IP space, or the return path is failing due to asymmetric routing.

FlokiNET specifically is worth mentioning in the TCP check context: it is a well-established provider in Iceland and Romania, often used by privacy-focused services. Some corporate firewalls and WAF systems apply stricter rules to FlokiNET IPs based on its reputation in certain threat intelligence feeds. If your TCP check fails only from the Bucharest FlokiNET node but succeeds from Bacău and other countries, check whether FlokiNET's IP range is on any block list your firewall consults.

Bucharest is the center of Romanian internet infrastructure. RONIX and InterLAN are the primary internet exchanges, with Equinix also operating a colocation and peering facility in the city. Romania has one of the highest average broadband speeds in Europe — consistently ranking in the top five for fixed broadband download speeds in EU comparisons. This is partly due to early investment in fiber-to-the-home by smaller competitive ISPs in urban areas, which created a dense fiber market before large incumbents dominated.

The major Romanian ISPs include RCS&RDS (AS8708), which is the largest broadband provider and operates a national fiber backbone, Orange Romania (AS9050), Telekom Romania (AS8953), and UPC Romania (AS6830, now Vodafone). RCS&RDS is particularly notable from a network perspective — it peers aggressively at European IXPs and has built transit infrastructure that competes with incumbents across the region. Its AS8708 appears frequently in traceroutes through Romania and neighboring countries.

InterLAN operates both an IX and carrier-neutral datacenter infrastructure in Bucharest. Equinix's Bucharest facility brought a globally recognized neutral colocation brand to the Romanian market and connects to Equinix's European fabric. These facilities have attracted regional hosting operators and CDN edge nodes, improving local content delivery for Romanian users and reducing reliance on Frankfurt or Vienna for content that was previously served from further west.

Bucharest's geographic position gives it reasonable latency to several important neighboring cities. Sofia is around 15 ms away, Budapest is roughly 20 ms, Belgrade around 20 ms, and Frankfurt around 40–45 ms. This places Bucharest within the Central European latency envelope for most practical purposes, making it a viable location for services targeting Southeastern EU users who want sub-20 ms local response times and EU-compliant hosting jurisdiction.

We operate two probe nodes in Romania. The first is in Bacău (northeastern Romania) on AS214062 via ITITAN HOSTING / Telesystem. The second is in Bucharest on AS200651 via FlokiNET. These nodes represent different geographic and network positions within Romania. Bacău is in the northeast, reflecting conditions for users in Moldova-border regions and northeastern Romania. Bucharest reflects the capital's IX-connected infrastructure. Running checks across both nodes gives a view of intra-country routing variation rather than just a single Bucharest-centric perspective.