# A new replication type: physical replication

**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/a-new-replication-type-physical-replication/157296
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Created:** [November 19, 2018, 8:36am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/a-new-replication-type-physical-replication/157296 "2018-11-19T08:36:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 4

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### Author: ![DavidTurner](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/davidturner/32/22453_2.png) [@DavidTurner](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/DavidTurner)
#### Post date: [November 19, 2018, 12:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/a-new-replication-type-physical-replication/157296/4 "2018-11-19T12:50:42Z")

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> [@djjsindy](#):
>
> I really want to know in what case, physical replication will have different effects, and even lead to performance degradation.

For instance I'd expect refreshes to take longer, because we have to build a segment on the primary and then copy it to each replica, rather than building segments concurrently on every shard copy. I'd also expect replication to take more bandwidth because each document must be replicated once to the remote translog (for durability) and then a second time as part of the segment in which it first appears, and then every subsequent time it appears in a merged segment too. I'm not saying these are necessarily bad tradeoffs to make, but they _are_ tradeoffs.

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