An update to the Postman API development released today brings multi-region support for monitoring API performance, and to measure network latency between regions.

To many, API performance has been a black-box situation. Developers rely on APIs to provide services and data to their applications, yet often don’t know the state of those APIs when they have been created by another organization. Often, a change to the API, or its location, can impact the application’s performance.

With the Postman update, “you make an HTTP request to the API with the test on Postman,” Abhinav Asthana, co-founder and CEO of Postdot Technologies, which produces Postman, told SD Times. “You can do it as often as every five minutes to make sure it doesn’t go down, which could result in massive losses” of business, he added.

“We can simulate what API response times will be like if, for example, you’re in the United States and the API is on a server in Japan,” Asthana said. The new multi-region support lets organizations “get as close to where their users are as possible,” he said, to reduce latency in API calls and improve overall application performance.

With this release, Postman supports six regions – US East, US West, Canada, EU, Asia Pacific and South America – mirroring the AWS API Gateway regions, he said, adding that Postman expects to add on more and more regions.