Q1) If I will only follow 1 stock intraday, with a dynamic real-time price, one intraday chart, and real time Time/Sale for that stock (and maybe L2 for that one stock), would 56k modem be good enough? Q2) Dial-up or DSL, which is the best ISP for trading? What's the difference between Tier1 ISP and the rest? If I go for DSL, which do you recommend: AOL, MSN, AT&T, Earthlink , or whatever else ...? If I continue to use dial-up only which is the best? (I have AOL and MSN now.) Which of the free-ISP's are the best?
my EARTHLINK dsl runs 1.4 mbts.... just under t1 speed..It jives so well with my dell precision workstation, that I will not not seperate it from my primary system ....leaving my cable which runs 2.3 mbts for the backup system......
If you're really only watching one stock then a 56k connection should be fine. You just have to worry about being dropped by the service provider. Cable is the bomb w/o dishing out money for a souped up line.
Earthlink is probably the only remaining major ISP who still cares about service. Definitely avoid SBC/Yahoo. If you really need realtime T&S, then I don't agree that dial-up is adequate, no matter what flavor.
No reason to use a modem these days unless you are in an isolated area that cant provide DSL or CableModem capabilities. In my satellite office I have both: I wouldn't even think of using dialup these days ..... Price is competitive for cable modem or dsl with dial up in most places. ....
Anybody trading over a wireless network to their cable or dsl? Would there be any problems doing this? Is it fast enough? Is dsl or cable better? thanks
See http://www.practicallynetworked.com/ . Look for (or ask them) about comparative data-rates for wireless versus broadband. It's not necessarily a no-brainer: broadband is a lot faster than dial, but you'd be surprised at how small the funnel becomes when going from the street to your NIC. On Win, use System Monitor to see how much bandwidth you're currently using, and compare that to wireless rates. Or just go ahead and get wireless, if trading isn't your only reason for it. For trading, ask yourself: do I really want to add another potential source of delay or unreliability?