A couple of years ago, I noticed a slowdown in my dial-up account and did a ping test. Bottleneck was in the Bay Area. Since using DSL, however, have not had execution/lag issue that I can discern. My trading style is not scalping or playing the spread, so even a delay of a second or two would be a virtual non-issue for me. Having said that, I have traded on both coasts and in Hawaii, and my current situation has been the most reliable by far. Whether it is a few milliseconds slower is way down on my trading priority list.
I'm not in Hawaii (too early a day for me), but I wouldn't think there would be any serious lag. If your broker is based in Calif, it would be no different than someone based in FL or NY. Actually, it might be better because when you go cross country, you may encounter a half dozen routers, but from Hawaii, you might be able to get on one strand of fiber from Hawaii to the mainland. 3000 miles without a router interception is probably a good bit faster (in microseconds) than 500 miles with 5 routers in-between. The time for moving the data through the router is where land based connections get bogged down. Without addtl routers, 3000 miles at 186,000 miles per second you only add .016 seconds latency (about 16ms).
Non-issue if you have DSL... but here are my ping rates from non-DSL serviceable back country of KAUAI: Ping 1 326 Ping 2 381 Ping 3 267 Ping 4 265 The fact that it works at all blows me away...
using hawaii.rr.com roadrunner + pixi DSL, both are very fast.. never had any lag problems here.. main thing is to have at least a couple ISPs in case one goes down, which they do on occasion.. agree early day bah humbug lol, but hey at least we're done by 10am for early round of golf at hawaii kai (or princeton on kauai or mauna kea on maui) hey let me know if you guys want to get together sometime in oahu, ryan's or duke's (duke's preferred because of the scenery) lol.
I've traded in Hawaii and in New York and I have not noticed any lag at all between the two. When entering orders from Hawaii, on ISLD for instance, my orders show up immediately on Level II when I hit the order button. If there is a lag I sure don't see it, and if there is I don't mind it if its that unnoticeable. Also,not sure what this means but, when I am on the phone with one of my trading buddies in Virginia, my CNBC feed is actually a second or two faster than his. I run a cable modem here, which runs me about $39 a month. I don't surf but come 10:00 am I try to perfect the art of total laziness. Its all good.
Yep. I haven't even thought of the speed of my connection until asked on this thread. I have other issues related to trading discipline that are more pressing- perfect weather, string bikinis, and the golf course across the street.......
Our club just got together this past friday at a local bar and grill. It was fun with a wide range of traders. If you are ever going to be in town, stop by the website let us know when you are going to be in, and maybe we can set something when you are here.