MySQL Replication Over Slow Links/High Latency

MySQL replication is considered to be efficient and usually changes in the master server are performed in the slaves within a single second. 
However, if you suffer from a replication that fails to close the gap, there are two main reasons for it: 

1. Slave Disk Issue: as replication is single threaded per database, usually the slave lags behind due to disk latency when implementing the changes. In this case you should consider using SSD to accelerate the process.
2. Low Bandwidth/High Latency Networking: in case where the two servers are located on remote locations (high latency case) or there is a low bandwidth between the servers, we should focus on minimizing the traffic between the servers using one (or both) of the following methods:
1. Using statement based replication: Row based replication creates a SQL statement per each changed row in the database. Statement based replication is records the actual SQL statement sent by the application. Usually statement based replication is much more efficient from log size aspect. However, you should be aware that it may not work correctly if you use UPDATE ... LIMIT 1 for example.
2. Compressing the traffic: MySQL supports log replication compression using the slave_compressed_protocol parameter. This method will reduce the traffic between the servers by up to 80%. However, compression is compute intensive, so you should be aware of some extra CPU utilization (that is usually not an issue in databases). This parameter should be enabled on both servers:
1. Dynamically from the MySQL command line:SET GLOBAL slave_compressed_protocol = 1;
2. In the MySQL configuration file:#compress master-slave communication
   slave_compressed_protocol = 1

Bottom Line

Understand why your replication lags behind and use the right method to solve it. Yes, it is that easy.

Keep Performing,

Moshe Kaplan