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Strategies & Market Trends : DAYTRADING Fundamentals -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gig who wrote (307)	6/8/1999 4:34:00 PM
From: -	Respond to of 18137

<... but what about the quality of the connection?> Bandwidth is the primary thing that characterizes your connection, but latency (prop time for packets through the network) is also important. Typically, faster (higher bandwidth) connections exhibit lower latency, but not always (e.g. satellites). There is also packet loss (routers too busy; poor-quality connections/datacomm errors, and contention for bandwidth (network congestion) to worry about. Some data providers "guarantee" some of these providers, e.g. Frame Relay "Service Level Agreements" (SLA's), "Committed Information Rates" (CIR's), etc. But that's only part of the story. It's important to realize that in connecting to your brokerage, you're dealing with a number of network & computing elements in the internet connection to them: 1) The access technology (e.g. ISDN, Cable Modem, DSL, etc) 2) The network behind it (possibly including your ISP's own network) - that is, the switching and routing gear which supports your connnection to the internet backbone - this can be a weak link 3) The internet backbone (some ISP's are more well-connected to the internet backbone than others 4) Your data provider and/or brokerage's ISP (same thing on their side) 5) Ultimately, the servers you're accessing, to get your price information and/or order fills. Often, the problems traders see, actually lie here. Try getting them to admit it, though, when there's "the internet" to blame! Good trading, -Steve