I am currently located in Thailand, trading the CME futures (AMP/Sierrachart/TTnet). Would it be an advantage being put on TTnet´s Singapore server if trading CME, or is this only of importance if trading the Singapore or Asian markets?
It all depends on the style of your trading. If you are manual it probably will not make a difference. If you are automated and have latency concerns you might already know the answer to that. If you are just asking to ask then I'd say keep your hardware close and don't worry about it. If you are in Singapore trading on a Chicago exchange moving your server >100 mi (less than 250km) may only save you a few ms but remember you have 100+ ms to get routed over to CME/CBOE.
I have always wondered why people don't just buy up real estate in Aurora, IL as proxy to colocation to the CME facilities. It is a moderately priced suburb of Chicago. Anybody know about the real estate there? Do you have good ping times?
My first post to Elitetrader, so here it goes ;-) I guess that if you're really in the HFT, than nothing is good enough, or just too expensive. But in algorithmic trading too, you may want the fastest execution after your algo decides to take action. I'm trading the S&P Futures E-mini from Europe on Interactive Brokers. From Europe, I have a ping time to their gateway of around 130ms. When I'm on a AWS instance in North Virginia, it's down to 35ms. So, if a 100ms matters to your strategy, than this could be a usefull investment.
I think if you're concerned with latency to the point where you would buy real estate, pay taxes, re zone the property, and run dark fiber to CME you might as well just co-locate with them. Between the hidden costs and effort I think there would be diminishing returns on your investment. I know that since CME would not initially allow them roof access the microwave vendors have leased land, and bought rights from the surrounding area but for the amount we pay them they can afford it and still turn a profit.
That's not a bad offer for anyone looking for this type of hosting. Although, the 1ms they say would be a bit unbelievable. If I ping my router that's only 5m/15ft away on a 1Gbit lan it takes 0.3ms already. But nonetheless, their offer could be worth considering if you really want to compete for those last ms.
Actually, I was making the naive assumption that I could walk in to Starbucks Aurora and get 30ms ping times.
i am not qualifying their claim, but I can say that 1ms to CME in aurora from downtown chicago (350 e cermac or 400/440 lasalle) is very possible. But the question is to where in CME, my guess is this is just to the datacenter demarc since most exchanges do not let you ping them. Building to building latency is 300-500us (microseconds) for Cermac to Aurora on a good fiber path. Any additional latency would be from additional switches or servers. My ping at home is around the same as yours at .3ms, but my colo server to server ping on the same switch is .024ms but this is with 10G using a very fast switch (200-600ns). Consumer routers with home networks cannot compare to high grade datacenter gear so while your numbers are real I think you could be talking apple and oranges when comparing home networks to datacenters.