title: DynamoDB write latency
body: <p>I am experiencing high latency when updating items in DynamoDB.
  I created a table named PerfTest with a hash key and executed the following command is shell on my computer.</p>
  
  <pre><code>time aws dynamodb update-item --table-name "PerfTest" --key '{ "id": { "S": "b3fcb08d-79bd-47f3-a52d-d6a4c3543060" }}' --attribute-updates '{ "counter": {"Value": {"N": "1000"}, "Action": "ADD"}}' --return-values NONE
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Time gave the following
  real    0m1.285s
  user    0m0.142s
  sys 0m0.038s</p>
  
  <p>I executed the same from an m1.micro instance and it still wrote 0.5 seconds.
  It's a little bit better via the Java API but I still cannot get close to the 1ms latency that others mention.</p>
  
  <p>What shall I know to fix this?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks, 
  rp</p>