Hi Dave, I was wondering how my connection was - just got DSL by Earthlink hooked up. Still not convinced and was thinking of giving cable a try. I typed in www.yahoo.com just for the try . I got this back, 1, 1ms 1ms 1ms 2, 34ms 34ms 34ms 3, 34ms 34ms 33ms 4, 35ms 73ms 34ms 5, 50ms 50ms 72ms 6, 50ms 50ms 50ms 7 50ms 50ms 50ms 8, 51ms 51ms 51ms 9, 51ms 51ms 51ms Does this make any sense ? Do I have to check and get IB's server address for the check ? Or is the above info' ok ? Sorry for so many questions, this very new for me. Thanks , andy
Andy, Those are good times. It looks like you are averaging 51 milliseconds. For comparison, dial up would have run between 300 and 600 milliseconds, if I remember correctly. Here's my ping result on www.yahoo.com first using the DOS command prompt, then what it looks like in PingPlotter. The IB server should be gw1.ibllc.com or 208.245.107.3. Plug in either in place of www.yahoo.com. I'm showing an avg. of 92 milliseconds for that address.
As always Dave, "thank you." I did the ping this time with the 208.245.107.3. for IB, came back four test 86ms avg. Just good to know at least I'm up to speed on one thing I had got kicked off a couple of times early last week and the week before, and was starting to doubt the DSL line. So far since then no problems and the speed seems good. Thank you again, andy p.s. just remembered to ask, do you use DSL or Cable ? Any opinion which is better, if any ? I'm sure it's been asked before, just need the confidence ;-)
I've never lived close enough to what the phone companies refer to as a "CO" so I've never been able to try DSL. For the last seven years, I've had cable. I would think both are quite good and really more dependent upon the reliability of the provider (Quest and Comcast up here in Colorado). Unless you are running some very fast trading styles or massive automation, those speeds should work fine. The large automated programs are generally co-located with the exchange, with sub 10 ms latencies.
pingplotter is available in the lite version for free. Try googling pingplotter. Also, try using a speed test on dslreports.com for comparison, eg, you can clock your speeds versus other folks who are reporting speeds from the same ISP - quite useful to see if you are getting what you pay for.
"I used a 5 point stop with a target of 8 and was never stopped on 5 lot trades. Made about $640 in 2 hours. I'm sure it happens, didnt happen to me today.' May I ask what indicators you were using to enter and exit ? In my experience 5 point stops were way to tight trading YM and I personally use a 10 point stop because other players in the game try to fake you out and hit your stops.
I'm quite knowledgeable wrt TCP/IP and connectivity. I live in Europe and my ping times to US IPs can't go under 170ms on my DSL (I use a ZyXEL unit which is quite good imo) or so even on weekend like now (due to lag of the transatlantic link). Nearby hops are about 30ms, so it's clearly not a bottleneck on my end. During regular hours with other traffic sharing the DSLAM my ping times are over 300ms (during more congested times could be 400-700ms). Also I think human reflexes are around 300ms (at least mine were, when I tested them on the Web a couple of months ago) Regardless, I don't think a human trader can or should try to match the trading style of blackboxes which scalp off order-flow andorder book info, being co-located (10ms) at brokers' sites. But would be interested to hear different opinions.
IB does not show every tick. They takes samples about 350ms frequency so there may be trades over/below the current IB delivered price data. Also do not read the PING results because they do not show you the delays in the backend platforms and between the IB and the exchanges. I have found the only way to calculate delays correctly is to sync your own clock with atomic clock and compare exchange trade data (tape readings reporter by the exchange) with the times recorded by your own computer. IB has normally 1-2 second delay and in extremely conditions I have encountered 5-8 second delays. So if you're using IB price feed you just have to learn to take into account the "missing ticks" by setting your stops more far away (ie. lowering your trade sizes to keep the risk at ok level) tm
OK, let's give some recent examples (always in IB account): Stopped out today 15-Apr-2005 @ 09:46est 10213, which was sofar the LOD (and YM immediately surged 50pt higher) Stopped out yesterday 14-Apr-2005 @ 10:31est 10347.5(avg), again YM immediately surged 50pt higher.