I currently have a server that is located at my home in Seattle. I'm using it to run an automated trading system using MultiCharts, with IQ Feed as my data provider and IB as my broker.

IB's servers are located in the New York City area (specifically, Greenwich, CT). Unfortunately, there's currently nearly 100 ms of latency between my current computer and the IB server at gw1.ibllc.com.

I'm considering having my server hosted someplace else, like at a data center in the New York City area, to minimize the ping. I'm not looking for a low-latency system per se, but I would like to eliminate any unnecessary lag between my server and the broker.

Based on the thread below, it appears that the IQ Feed servers are located in Denver. If this is the case, would there still be a significant benefit to having my server hosted elsewhere? E.g., if I had my server hosted in the New York City area, how much latency should I expect between Denver and New York? Alternatively, would it make more sense to have my server hosted in Denver, or someplace central like Chicago?

http://forums.iqfeed.net/index.cfm?page=topic&topicID=3190

If any of the IQ Feed technical support people would have time to ping the IB server (gw1.ibllc.com) from their Denver location and report back, that would be great. That would give me some idea of the "best case" ping between Denver and New York.

For what it's worth, my strategy currently is mostly trading futures on CME Globex in Chicago. However, I think that my trades will still have to go through IB's severs in New York before they're routed by IB back to CME in Chicago. (Please correct me if I'm mistaken.)
Edited by Xyzzy on Feb 16, 2012 at 03:04 AM

Hello Xyzzy,

The comments from DTN Steve S on that forum that you cited are still true:

Our servers are located in Omaha and Bellevue Nebraska.

Using a centralized location (most traffic will run through either Chicago, Denver, or Dallas) in the US allows us good speeds to most users while maintaining low costs.

The latency from us to the exchange is minimal. We have dedicated lines to most exchanges/data providers. This means that the latency from us to your machine (via the general internet) is the significant portion of the connection in terms of latency.


Also, I ran a ping test to gw1.ibllc.com and it came up as a 74 ms round trip. If you want to email me at Support@IQFeed.net , I will be glad to send you a screenshot.

From my home server in CA its 95ms to IB and 65ms to DTN. From my AWS instance in Virginia (us-east-1a) its 10ms to IB and 55ms to DTN. I'd say that's about as good as it gets for less than 50$ a month.

Just my two bits.

Thank you Jaikumarm -
we appreciate the positive feedback.