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Strategies & Market Trends : Systems, Strategies and Resources for Trading Futures -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sripad who wrote (43011)	12/30/2000 4:42:52 PM
From: Louis V. Lambrecht	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 44573

sripad - trading platform Mostly, low performance on Internet are not on your side. A reliable dial-up provider with current 24k to 33k connections is more than enough. When I run my RT charting programm with abaut 200 RT quotes and other indicators, I rarely use 2k bandwith. What matters: find an ISP (whichever technology) who is not overloaded. For instance, a dial-in ISP should have at least one modem line per 10 subscribers. Free ISPs regularly have more than 30, even 50 subscribers per modem. Some cable providers survey their users, some not. It can happen that some high speed providers be slower han dial-in providers. test your real speed here: msn.zdnet.com homepage.tinet.ie Second step: check with a route tracer how many hops you needs to connect to the destination. visualroute.com can help you. This checks the hops and the delays of your connection. Third step: your trade station. This should be a puter that does just that and nothing else. Problems with browsers and Java softwares are, for one part clumpsy programming, for the other part de-installation left-overs from other clupsy programmers. For instance, Java comes in three flavors: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3. In most cases, you end up with all the versions on your computer. Some instructions have been improved but some which did not caused an error in former versions would halt the machine on a later version. (It is the programmer who should instruct to use a specific versions, but they rarely do so). Last important piece: the CPU speed. Due to the Internet protocol, you computer has to resend some packets very quickly (and often). So, your trading platform should be a fast CPU puter with no other special requirements. I have a 300 MHz box with almost nothing as peripherals and the job gets done. Will look for a deal in notebooks after new year. Windows is loaded with minimum features, and very few applications have been installed. Also perform a fresh installation (format the hard drive) every 2 or 3 months. You would hook that trading station to another computer (on which you run all the other stuff you would want) with internetshare.com Don't overkill your installation: if you really want to have the best bang for the bucks, you should consider the Bloomberg bloomberg.com . All the rest is wasted money, IMHO. PS: I don't have a Bloomberg either (yet ?) and am wasting my money. $10000 investment, geez, twice the initial margin requirement for an e-Mini.LOL. You can spend fortunes on hardware, but don't forget that it will be obsolated the day you buy it. $3k is a fair amount for buying 2 new networked puters. Add $200 a month for eSignal and your ISP. (some brokers as ZAP can void that amount if you trade frequently) If your screen is overcrowded, check matrox.com but you could buy another puter for the price of those cards.