We have a client/server application that uses a MySQL database on the server. Some of the clients now connect to the network using an internet dongle, and we saw a real problem with performance on those machines, although the network speed is OK. We figured out that this network has a very slow ping, the traceroute shows it goes first to another island, then to the US, and then back to Aruba and it takes around 700ms to ping.

What is the best way to improve performance of a client/server application in this situation? My thought so far was to try to create asynchronous transactions, but this is a lot of work and sometimes not possible.