Yup. Actually, I did the math using their API. For their USDT_BTC pair alone they make over $26k per day, which is over $9 million a year. Add in all those other markets and yeah, I think they can afford to fix their server problems, they just don't care because it's the HFT whales who make them the most money anyway, and I'm sure they all have their servers colocated next to polo's servers, so lag isn't an issue for them.
You are right. HFT whales located next to Poloniex' servers will have less delay in sending orders and executing trades than someone located in China.
On the other hand, if Polo is trying to mitigate a DDoS attack, being close to their servers doesn't change anything.
One sure think is that they should be able to take the load on. They earn enough money to have a top notch infrastructure resilient to DDoS.
However lately there have been a lot of very intense DDoS attacks tho ... Remember that attack on Dyn Dns which made websites like apple.com, spotify or netflix unavailable ?
Well ... if these companies also have troubles with such attacks, how can Poloniex prevent them ?
Check this :
Someone is learning to break the internetWhat Polo does is not right.
I think they should turn off margin trading during DDoS attacks but they won't make the money from it.