I just recently moved from seattle where we had comcast and were forced to use their router. We now have verizon fios and I can actually use my own router and have more control over the network.
I have been researching what sort of router I should get, but sadly most review sites talk about home servers, wifi range, and IOT. Useful information for some, but darn near irrelevant for me.
Here are my top priorities for choosing a router.
1: Absolute lowest possible latency. A 5-10ms delay could end up costing between 5-10 dollars per trade. I am more than happy to give up features and even security (within reason) for every possible ms of latency.
2: Dependability. If I am in the middle of a trade and my internet goes out, im flat out screwed.
3: control over things like DNS, VPNs, and other tricks I can use to prevent verizon from bouncing me around to various servers in the area.
I do actually have enough spare computer parts to build a small router, but I do have to make sure I have wireless AC for my laptop and for my mom whenever she drops by.
Any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
EDIT: I AM using ethernet for my trading PC. All I am using wireless for is my laptop and any guests I may have.
If you’re worried about latency then I’d start by not using WiFi. In my experience as long as your router’s processor isn’t pegged latency shouldn’t be any different from device to device.
Agreed, for the lowest possible latency, stay far away from WiFi.
If you are inclined to build, it’s hard not to recommend pfSense. It seems to me that I recently saw a blurb regarding the latest release, stating that the traffic shaper had somehow been massaged, in order to reduce buffer bloat.
For something off the shelf, I like Ubiquiti. They actually stand by their equipment with security patches and feature upgrades every few weeks.
No matter which router you go with, Ubiquiti also has very nice wireless access points, for very attractive prices.
EDIT:
In terms of up time, look into a UPS of sufficient capacity to keep your network, PC and monitor up and running. Depending on your topography, you may need more than one UPS.
EDIT 2:
If you positively need to be online at all times, get a second Internet account from a different company. pfSense can manage multiple accounts and do automatic fallover for you.
That is very unlikely unless you’re doing high-frequency trading. And those guys buy offices physically right next to the market to minimize transfer times due to the speed of light. For daytrading at home, the difference between 10ms and 200ms is essentially zero.
Anyway, follow The Wirecutter. If you’re really concerned about uptime, get a second internet connection from your cable company and a second router.
Im trading futures contracts. 1 price move or a “tick” is worth 5-10 dollars depending on what Im trading. Some price moves occur within a fraction of a second and you are also trying to jump in line before someone else gets ahead of you.
Loosing a tick or two due to any delay or order entry is called slippage. I loose about 600 bucks a month on slippage.
Anything I can do to reduce that is money in my pocket.
I also AM trading on a PC with a dedicated ethernet line. I should have mentioned that in the post. The only thing I need wifi for is basic internet for my laptop and any visitors. Otherwise its ethernet all the way.
The router has little impact on the speed. Location to your ISP provider and your ISP’s route to the service your connecting too is what matters.
Considering you are not going to move to be closer to the service. You might want to test the various providers for speed / ping. perhaps have 2 of the best ISP on different last mile. Then network them together for failover.
I’m inclined to agree with others here. Your router isn’t going to make a huge difference, get a decent one and your good to go on that side. There will be little difference between routers in the same price point.
As mentioned by others there are greater issues to consider that make your router a non issue. Latency issues on your actual line is going to make any fractions of a millisecond improvement on your router choice pointless.
Assuming your making significant enough money you would be better looking at getting a dedicated Ethernet circuit. The difference you will have on latency will be night and day compared to residential broadband.
As others suggested, for example you could put a small server system physically close to the trading platform, then run a dedicated circuit to your server. Something like this will minimise latency. A router… once you get a decent one there’s no difference (unless you want to buy a bunch and test latency to find where you can get fractional gains)
I don’t understand, are you relying on your own trigger finger reacting fast enough to execute trades?
What I meant was that you could rent a Windows VM in a datacenter where you don’t get the typical 10ms+ overhead of residential internet, and you remote into it.
Why rely on residential tech/internet for such sensitive professional requirements? I do doubt that the router is the limiting factor. ISP and routing, as mentioned, are probably orders of magnitude more significant.
There are trading VPSs marketed specifically for traders, in datacenters located near exchanges in NYC or Chicago, etc with nearly 0-1ms latency. Yes, they’re typically intended for automated strategies, but still possible for discretionary trading. At least if you lose your residential internet or power, your orders on your local trading platform won’t vanish.
While it’s true that every ms can cost (or sometimes gain…) in slippage, that’s below the resolution of ~25ms human reaction time…
I have not seen any that really offer discretionary trading. I have played around with VMs that you could kind of sort of use for discretionary trading and didn’t really like them. I was seeing a delay with the VM back to my machine, and somehow just trading normally seemed to be better than using a VM from the broker in chicago. Im definitely open to the idea, I just haven’t found the right solution yet. Hell I still haven’t even found a trading platform I really like yet either.
I will say that with multicharts, your orders, targets, and stops are all sever side. So the moment the order is placed, your computer could go sideways and you are still relatively safe. Im not TOTALLY unprotected, but I do very much agree that having a colocated server would be ideal.
Any serious day traders rent servers in datacenters.
If you want to be serious about day trading, you need to develop algorithms to handle it all for you and run the software on a hosted server, preferably in New York.
It sounds like pfsense would be the best use of time for this, unless an almost-server like router is in your aim. Something similar to Linus Torvalds’ setup minus the need for ALL THE BANDWIDTH :3
I should get back into networking again. I used to know good setups for stuff like this.
Thats is flat out wrong. I have learned how to day trade by meeting and learning from other day traders. I would say out of the 20 people I have met, none of them were auto trading. 5 of these guys actually have a virtual seat at the CME and could auto trade for basically free and refuse to do so.
Now that being said, I just moved back to the east cost and will be going up to New York to learn from some people up there, and they could very well be auto traders.
But I would say that for the moment the ONLY reason I have been successful is because I trade discretionary. I have met a ton of people who use auto trading for like a week or two and make 100K or some crazy amount of money, and then the algorithm or the platform goes sideways and they loose it all in one or two hours.
The 1 and only person I have met who is consistently successful with auto trading made this AI machine learning server and then made his own trading platform to execute the trades. And while thats really cool and all, I am NOT that good of a programer what so ever.
Oh its actually real simple. Every time I have switched from the router provided by the ISP to a half decent after market one, the latency drops a bit among other improvements.
I was just wondering if there was any more performance to be had
There is. Dump the residential ISP and your latency will disappear. And off the shelf router will be better than an ISP one a lot of the time, but that’s not where most of your latency will come from.
You want consistently low latency I imagine? In that case you need guarantees on your line. Consumer lines are shared bandwidth, have no sla, and because of that can be prone to faults and slow downs at any time without prior warning.