How much speed do you need?

J

jmsco

I've been experiencing some slow periods and occasional downtime with my cable broadband service during market hours.

I've heard that different forms of dsl are more stable and that depending on the type of service the actual speed loss will not be too severe. What type of data connection do most traders use? (cable, dsl, t1, t3) And why? How fast of a connection does one need to intraday swing trade (both upload and download)?

Thanks for the info,

Jeff.
 
depends on how many stocks or futures you are following. trading one future with one chart works fine with a 56K connection. If you want to monitor hundreds of stocks... well different story.

cable is working ok.. but when the local provider is not stable then you better change.

alain
 
Thanks for the reply. I'm currently using TS6 and only trading the S&P emini contract. However, I also keep track of another 4 or 5 other stocks and indices.

Obviously, when the cable is working and not congested its very fast, but the stability problems are not a good tradeoff, imo for trading.

So what do most home or small office use?

Thanks, Jeff.
 
A dsl would be fine for the individual home or small business. If you get past 5 users consider a fractional T-1 or another dsl. A full T-1 or T-3 would either be hunting a mouse with a shotgun, or a tank.
 
It sounds like getting dsl for the stability and keeping the cable for back-up or even vice versa should work. It will be just me using the line. There are a few choices when it comes to DSL in my area (Cape Cod, MA). They have one plan with 768kbps download and 128kbps upload and the other has "up to" 1.5 Mbps download and 128kbps upload. Is the extra download speed needed? Does it even really matter?

Thanks, Jeff.
 
The slower DSL speed should be just fine. I'm using 512 X 128 and it works great.

Most cable connections are also pretty good. Your problem may actually be out of your Cable provider's control. In any case, I would ping the server that you are talking to. 50ms or less is good. Call your cable company and complain. Give them the IP address of the site you are having difficulty with. They or you can run a traceroute and determine where the packets are getting dropped.
 
Either cable or dsl is fine. you only need both if you want one for backup. bullfighter's comments are spot on. if you have a slowdown, tracert the server. most likely you will find the problem is a bad router somewhere. you likely will not get anywhere near the posted DSL speed. in my experience 60% of it was about the norm.
 
I have 7 monitors....Have about 100 stock quotes.....8 charts... 4 news windows, AIM, Neovest First Alert filter (with just NYSE stocks), an execution system, a live P&L blotter and couple of I.E. pages open..... Im on Road Runer cable with "up to" 1.5M/down, 356K up. I usually dont get that performance but I have not had much problems yet. I do wish i had just a little bit more download speed but I dont think paying extra $250/month for business service is worth the speed. I dont have any problem with delayed quotes and such with what I have.

Im the only one on my system...from home. My system consists of a dual pentium (not sure what CPU) with 512K RAM.

I know T1 is not necessary for what you want to do. But I would not want to trade with a dial up. Why? Its unreliable and its probabaly too slow.

I have always headr that DSL is more troublesome than cable. I do know that Verizon DSL in Manhattan 2 years ago was just horrible. Im not sure how reliable they are now. As for the drop off in speed when others are on the cable...since Im on during 9-4, most school kids are at school - not at home downloading videos. So it doesnt seem to affect the speed much during work hours.


Hope this helps.
 
im sure, dsl will be fast enough for your kind of trading.
but whenever you have downtimes, check if it is really your (providers) fault.
i have downtimes multiple times a week (normally 2-3 seconds)
last downtime (> 30 seconds) had cost $400 cause i was in a fully automated strategy and didnt recognize that my stop couldnt be sent.
(only visible in messages, and as i had 12 charts open, i didnt see this certain chart)

after occurring downtimes again,i tried to ping (network test) the ts tradeserver.
i couldnt.
but i could ping there website. so i am sure, ts tradeservers are overloaded/down and not your (or my) connection

lippi
 
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