IB owns its seat on the merc and given that I am able to place orders from HK in less than 300 milliseconds on a 56K modem, I doubt you have any speed advantage given your setup. You might be able to eliminate one hop but I'd be surprised if it made that much of a difference. Give us some trace route stats, we'd all be interested.
I'm sure those of you closer to the IB hubs with faster connections have many orders placed in under 200 milliseconds given that test orders from our CT office have shown speeds of less than 10 milliseconds.
Bone, as for your contention that you must be first. I believe, the amount of time it takes you to click your mouse or hit your hotkey probably takes more time to route your order. Also liquidity is good enough in these contracts that even a second delay shouldn't hinder a trader if they know how to pick there entry an exit points well.
IB is not alone in offering fast speed and there are alot of good firms out there. Naturally, you'll want as fast a connection as possible to the exchange. However, the markets are so liquid and deep in the e-minis that I'm suspect of someone trading with a manual front end stating that 50 milliseconds means the difference between profit and loss.
