Mike, I did the ping with rutgers.edu and my average time was 108 ms (I'm using Qwest DSL, supposed to be 640K download speed). You mentioned in a previous post that 50ms or less was "good." How bad is 108 ms? Do you think it's too slow for trading purposes (intraday)?
To do a traceroute go to dos and type: tracert www.yahoo.com (replace with your website / IP #) 100 ms isn't bad.
I use a tracing program called Neotrace to check my routes. You can get a copy from http://www.cybergeography.org (which is a really interesting site anyway).
hapaboy, It is not terrible. I would not worry about it. Each site on the internet is going to be different due to the number and congestion rate of the routers. Again, ping and tracert your data provider's servers. Compare down or sluggish times to normal. You WILL figure it out. It may actually be your provider's servers. Ask others if they experience the slowdown as well. Good Luck Mike PM me if you can't figure it out.
I got a call last night from my friends at Verizon wanting to know if I would sign up for their DSL service at a "special" introductory price. I was surprised that it was in regards to DSL, because the last two nights I received three calls from Verizon about Long Distance service. Apparently, the DO NOT CALL LIST didn't apply to the DSL department of Verizon. I said that I had actually been thinking about getting DSL service (the reason for my original post). She said, "That's great" I said what speed is the connection and do I have any options?" I thought the phone went dead there was such a long pause. Finally she says, "I need to ask somebody." When she returns with the info I ask her what the cost is and I could practically hear her smile as she was able to return to her prepared phone script and leave the world of actual thinking conversation. I asked them to send me some information and she says, "Um, we don't have anything to send to people. That's why we're offering a special rate to sign people up over the phone." I said no thanks. Oh well, maybe my cable service isn't as bad as I thought. Have a good weekend, Jeff.
DSL won't be as fast as cable. If your cable is reliable I'd stick with that. If your Cable is anything like mine, DSL should be more reliable for you. I have DSL from Verizon also. I had to add a 2nd phone line to get my # to qualify but so far I'm very pleased with the service. What is the special rate they are offering? I presume that is the Bronze Plus package?
Tripack, Their special rate was for the 768/128 package. It was $29.95 for three months then $39.95 for the new three months. The person I spoke to didn't say what the package was called, but judging from their website its looks to be the basic service. For now, I sticking with Cable. I can always call the futures desk to get out of my position. At some point I should probably consider DSL as a back-up plan. If only their special offer was for T1 service at $29.95 per month. Jeff.
I don't mean to offend, but A T1 is 1.54MegaBits/second bidirectional. Unless you are continously transferring data (like a download), you do not need this kind of bandwidth. If you had a T3 (45MBs), and a bandwidth monitor, you would see that you never would go over 500Kbs with a trading application. Think of a connection across the internet as a series of straws lined up end to end. You could have a 2" diameter straw (T1) but if anyone along the way has a 1/4" straw, the best speed you are going to get is the 1/4" staw. More importantly is how close you are to the TIER 1 of the internet and what type of congestion is there between you and the TIER 1. My earlier posts explain this. As far as cable or DSL being better, that varies according to the providers topology. You could have 3 times the cable speed as my DSL, by my DSL could have better overall performance. Mike