Hey def, I thought I would ask you this question because I think you are based in Asia. I've recently started trading the HSI (Hang Seng) futures, and I live in Chicago. Now, I'm not a scalper so this is more of a curiosity question. I was wondering what you might guess the latency time to be in transmission from Chicago to Hong Kong. It's 12000 miles or so in distance, so I would think that it would begin to show. Of course, it would make a big difference whether or not IB transmits those orders via cable, or via satellite...the latter taking even longer I would guess (at 48000 miles, up and back down). Is IB's transmission from Chicago to Hong Kong by cable or satellite? Thanks, saxon
You will go via your ISP into IB's servers in the US or Asia. I assume that route is via cable. Once on IB's servers it is all fibre. I can tell you from the HK office to the exchange, the vast majority of orders get there in well under 20 milliseconds. To get to our office in HK from Chicago, I would estimate about 200 milliseconds. In the end, that shouldn't make a difference when trading manually.
saxon Elecrtical signsls travel only slightly slower than the speed of light. About 176,000 miles per scond. So your 48,000 mile guess would take maybe 350 millsconds max. agpilot