Upgrading Router for Higher Internet Speeds

[i2w8am9ii2]

Hello,

I'm considering upgrading my router to attempt to get higher internet speeds and to attempt to have a more stable connection.

I currently have an ASUS RT-AC68U Wireless Router

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-RT-AC68U-AiMesh-Dual-band-AiProtection/dp/B07B316542/ref=sr_1_3

I'm considering upgrading to the following router:

NETGEAR Orbi Tri-band Whole Home Mesh WiFi System with 2.2Gbps speed

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Orbi-Whole-Home-System/dp/B07CQDHPFT/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=14303876021&hvbmt=bb&hvdev=c&hvqmt=p

Anyone have any suggestions or feedback on that? Good idea, or waste of time and money?

Thanks,

i2w8am9ii2

[bltdavid]

Anyone have any suggestions or feedback on that? Good idea, or waste of time and money?

Yeah, don't use WiFi for trading, use an Ethernet cable attached directly to the router.

If you're directly attached to the router (regardless of brand) via an Ethernet cable, chances
are you will get the maximum speeds provided by your ISP, with no interferences.

Your router doesn't have a lot to do with your internet speed. Most WiFi routers support 4
Ethernet ports as well as Wireless connectivity at speeds that are usually much greater than
the download speeds provided by your ISP.

For example, 1Gbps speeds on the home LAN is due to the 4 router ports all supporting
1Gbps speeds, but lots of folks trade with speeds less than 1Gbit from their ISP. Besides
even if you have 1Gbps service from your ISP, that is probably your download speed, most
ISP uploads speeds will be much much less, like around 25Mbps or less.

For most ISP plans for most folks (mine included), when you submit a Market order to
open a position, or hit Close button to exit a position, this act of NinjaTrader submitting
these orders is considered an 'upload' and is usually extremely slow.

Your ISP download speeds affect your data feed speed, and your historical data download
speed, and thus, your charts.

Your ISP upload speed affects your order submissions, esp your Market orders used
for entry/exit of positions.

What are the download/upload speeds of your current plan with your ISP?

[bltdavid]

I'm considering upgrading my router to attempt to get higher internet speeds and to attempt to have a more stable connection.

I currently have an ASUS RT-AC68U Wireless Router

https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-RT-AC68U-AiMesh-Dual-band-AiProtection/dp/B07B316542/ref=sr_1_3

I'm considering upgrading to the following router:

NETGEAR Orbi Tri-band Whole Home Mesh WiFi System with 2.2Gbps speed

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Orbi-Whole-Home-System/dp/B07CQDHPFT/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=14303876021&hvbmt=bb&hvdev=c&hvqmt=p

Anyone have any suggestions or feedback on that? Good idea, or waste of time and money?

Your current router seems perfectly fine to me.
Are you having connectivity issues?

Upgrading to the 2.2Gbps router won't affect your internet speeds connecting to the world outside your
home -- I mean, are you paying for 2.2Gbps service from your ISP? Probably not.

Consider that 2.2Gbps downloads from the internet would be blazingly fast, and hugely expensive, and
probably not available to mere mortals on retail budgets.

So, just because you upgrade your router, you're not going to get that shiny new 2.2Gbps router to give
you 2.2Gbps download speeds unless you first pay your ISP to provide you with 2.2Gbps speeds.

[i2w8am9ii2]

Hi bltdavid,

Yes, I always only use an Ethernet cable connection to trade the futures markets.

I am directly attached to my router via an Ethernet cable.

I guess I misunderstood that somehow my router would effect that Ethernet connection.

I have a laptop that I connect to via my WiFi and I do have a lousy cell Smart Phone connection when I am upstairs. That might make the cost of upgrading worthwhile. But maybe not. Still evaluating it.

I currently have the fastest speed plan that my ISP (Spectrum) offers.

Thanks for your input,

i2w8am9ii2

[bltdavid]

I currently have the fastest speed plan that my ISP (Spectrum) offers.

And how fast is that?

[i2w8am9ii2]

200 Mbps

i2w8am9ii2

[i2w8am9ii2]

Hi marcus2300,

Thanks for your reply and for the info.

I did install the free version of Networx. I still need to learn how to read the data it provides. I am also looking at their NetMaster product.

I have four computer monitors with 12 mini-charts on one workspace, and 7 charts on another workspace, and with 6 charts on another workspace, and with 5 charts on yet another workspace (30 charts total).

I also use Order Flow indicators and other volume based indicators that are somewhat of resource hogs.

So I would prefer overkill and to have more Mbps than I need, just in case.

Thanks for the product link. I will look into it.

i2w8am9ii2

[brucerobinson]

Hello,
From what I read of these posts and your other thread on this issue of quest for 'speed', and commenting in the context of your trading wishes re: your detail on workspace, charts etc, there are 2 things to consider & I believe you're only focusing on one: bandwidth & latency. Latency, or 'ping speed', is a measure of response time to the servers server's you're connecting with. There are tools freely available to measure. If you're manually trading ultimately the round trip is from what you see to your finger through mouse to order placement at the other end and everything in that 'circuit' in response time plays a part.
On ISP latency Vs bandwidth, think of it this way: if you have a family of 5 all wanting to watch bandwidth hungry video Netflix, youtube etc simultaneously you need a 'fast, and fat, pipe' - your ISP, your, router, your cables etc. If you try to consume multi Netflix etc through a thin pipe, you'll get speed issues (video stutter).
But if it is not lots of data, your pipe is 'fat enough', then it is latency that takes over in your quest. If your are sending a dribble through it, but the pipe has twists and turns and garbage and rough walls, and connections are slow to let the data through, poor latency will be your enemy.
I haven't seen much discussion on here about how much data Ninja passes back and forth to operate, and many many setup-specific variables. I guess I could look at Networx, netmon and the like but haven't found the need.
I'm a little confused by Marcos comments that workspace, charts etc are irrelevant, as they need data to drive them.
To give some real life example context - I run workspaces with a gazillion charts & multiple instruments, Doms etc. Multiple big 4k monitors. So lots of 'video'.
I have a very narrowband connection, I live miles from an Exchange. Fibre is a far away dream. From the box to my house is alluminium, which according to the telecom engineers is baaad. If two people use video simultaneously we get stutter. However my latency is good.
My trading pc is connected by WiFi (I'm not recommending it over hard wired, there are reasons, I use a wireless bridge to connect two areas of the house), I'm just saying 'what is'). Recently I have used an add on to show up any lag between my charts and Ninjas servers.
Even during Corona mayhem lag is near zero, mainly sub 100ms and re: responsiveness of the platform, no discernible delay (mouse clicking, any 'normal in platform trading activities').
What that tells me, is that for the amount of data Ninja needs to send through my pipe, it is wide enough, despite being a narrow one.
As always, these things are specific to circumsRance. But do you know you need a bigger/better connection for trading, and if you believe you do, how do you know that. Not 'telling you' you don't, I don't know your setup/needs, but my own experience would lead me to question it.
Best,

[i2w8am9ii2]

Hi marcus2300,

Thanks so much for your detailed explanation and for the screenshots.

I appreciate your help with that very much.

I will play around with the program to try to grasp using it correctly.

i2w8am9ii2

[bltdavid]

Yes, I always only use an Ethernet cable connection to trade the futures markets.

I am directly attached to my router via an Ethernet cable.

Excellent. This is best.

The type of Ethernet cable you use depends on the speed of the Ethernet port you're plugged into on the back
of your router. Almost all wireless routers have 4 Ethernet ports for direct connections, and the maximum speed
of these 4 ports on most routers is 1 Gbps (which is actually quite excellent) -- so you always want to make sure
any router you purchase is a "Gigabit" router -- meaning the Ethernet ports can operate at 1 Gbps speeds, which is
usually stated like "10/100/1000 TBase" in the router's specification. The "1000" is important, it means 1000 Mbps,
and provided a 10-fold increase in speeds from the older "10/100 TBase" routers of the early internet years.

The next higher direct-cabled speed is 10 Gbps, and, yes, "10 Gigabit" routers do exist for home users, but
your PC must have a 10 Gbps Ethernet port, and all devices cabled to the router should be 10 Gigabit capable as
well -- otherwise your LAN speeds will fall back to 1 Gbps, or the lesser speed of whichever two devices are using
the LAN to communicate.

Technically, the LAN in your house is just the devices using Ethernet cables to connect to the router-- the wireless
LAN or WLAN is a different thing -- this wireless connectivity was added to the old-school device known simply as
the router, thus these devices have morphed into being called 'wireless routers'.

I guess I misunderstood that somehow my router would effect that Ethernet connection.

The wireless portion of the router and direct-cabled portion of the Ethernet ports on the router operate at completely
different speeds. These speeds between the two connectivity methods have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

The push nowadays is on wireless speeds. Why? Because the whole world inside your house has been moving towards
the internet for a long time now. Almost all these devices inside your house are connecting to the internet via the wireless
network from your router -- meaning they'll all share the wireless airwaves and potentially interfere with each other -- which
is one reason why you'll see routers offer two or even three wireless networks (such as a 2.4 GHz network, a 5 GHz network,
and perhaps a "guest" network) so that interference can be "managed" simply by connecting to one of the other wireless
networks.

The 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz are radio frequencies for communications, not wireless connectivity speeds. A "dual-band' router
is (by definition, a wireless router) broadcasts both a 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz signal from the same unit. Each wireless network
on the router will have its own name and password -- defined by you.

The wireless connectivity speeds are controlled by a protocol, such as the 802.11b/g/n/ac from the IEEE folks.

Ever hear about 'N' wireless routers awhile back? That was the 802.11n protocol gaining traction in the market. To
take advantage of an 'N' wireless router, your laptop also needed to support 'N' as well -- the early days are always
a mess in these things -- don't upgrade without considering how the upgrade impacts all devices in your house.

I have a laptop that I connect to via my WiFi and I do have a lousy cell Smart Phone connection when I am upstairs. That might make the cost of upgrading worthwhile. But maybe not. Still evaluating it.

The push for faster wireless speeds in recent wireless routers is good news for you.

One way to achieve faster wireless speeds is to reduce or eliminate blind spots and interference.

For ex, the wireless router product you're considering is a 3-unit product, which builds a wireless network
from a "mesh" -- which just means more devices provide more coverage and the "mesh" features make
all devices work together, giving you a seamless wireless network that can drastically eliminate blind spots.

Got a favorite corner or room in the house perfect for a laptop but getting a poor WiFi Connection? Well,
that 3-unit product could help you there, no question.

Interference is another matter. This is why you'd choose the 5 GHz network, if your device supports it.
Why? Because fewer devices use the 5 GHz radio frequencies -- the 2.4 GHz radio frequency is shared
with microwave ovens, car alarms, cordless home phones, etc. Lots of things (esp lots of non-internet things)
have been crowded into this frequency band, and channel conflicts within this frequency band can be common.

So, why upgrade to that new 3-unit 2.2 Gbps wireless router?

First, the internet connectivity from your ISP is no reason to upgrade from your current router. Your internet
speeds on the trading desktop directly cabled to an Ethernet port would receive absolutely zero benefit from
a new router. The current router is perfectly fine for your desktop.

The benefit would have to come from the blind spot reductions -- you're wanting a 3-unit system for a reason,
right? Well, the dual-band features are present in both routers, but the 3-unit setup might be able to help with
poor reception in one or more areas of your house -- that's the only reason to upgrade.

Lastly, a word about wireless speeds, such as the advertised 2.2 Gbps speeds of that 3-unit system.

Unless you're transferring files (and I mean, big files, like pictures, music, and video, esp big video files)
between two wireless devices inside your house -- that 2.2 Gbps speed capability is unused.

And "streaming" doesn't count (unless you have a home server and you use the WiFi to stream from the home
server, say, to your TV or laptop) because most uses of the term "streaming" imply "over the internet", and
any internet speeds for any device in your house, Ethernet or wireless, will never be faster than your ISP
connection, which is currently at 200 Mbps.

Ever see that term "On-Demand", perhaps from Dish TV or somebody else? Well, this is marketing
speak for 'streaming', which is a technology designed to provide your device with just enough data for
what's needed at the moment. Consider a 30min video, do you need all 30mins downloaded before you
watch the first minute? No, you don't -- but old internet transfer technology would want to download the
entire 30 mins of video before you could start playing any video at all. Enter the idea of on-demand,
which became known as streaming. This is where enough data is received and stored in a buffer, say
2-3 mins worth of video, and as long as the transfer side can stay ahead of the player side (aka, keep
the buffer relatively full) you get a seamless video download/playback experience. Streaming is a god
send for devices stuck on households with lower internet speeds, such as 25-50 Mbps, which is a lot
of America, because the streaming download/playback software dance makes very efficient use of
the lower bandwidth.

And my final point is:
Any wireless devices that stream content from the internet (eg, Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV, etc) should
probably be on the 5 GHz wireless network of your router. Sure, the 5 GHz network is a bit faster, but
the real reason to choose 5 GHz for streaming devices over the 2.4 GHz network is to reduce interference,
and the rationale behind that is to reduce the potential for interference (because microwaves, car alarms,
etc, are all unpredictable events, so use the network with fewer devices).

It's Friday, and it's been one hell of a week in the markets. Time for a beer.

Good luck!

[i2w8am9ii2]

Hi brucerobinson,

Thanks for your explanation and for the info. I appreciate it.

I guess that I started focusing on internet speed, Ethernet cables, bandwidth and so on because while day trading the futures markets live, I sometimes have large draw-downs. I usually recover from the draw-downs and end up with a nice profit. Not always, but I have a fairly high win rate and have been in the green and building up equity nicely for some time now.

But I have suffered some very large losing days along the way to where I am now.

So I know that if I lost my internet connection or had a power outage in my area while trading the markets live, having to contact my broker to flatten my position could result in a very large loss.

In fact I did have a $3000+ loss during one day when I lost my internet connection and was in a trade before the market open for the CL. I called the 24 hour desk and had around a $600 loss initially, but that turned into a $3000+ loss very quickly during the minute or so that it took to confirm flattening my position.

During that time, the market open for the CL came and went and the price went crazy on me. Luckily I was able to recoup that entire loss before the end of the trading day, but only because there was a very large trending price move that I was able to take advantage of later on.

So getting back to the subject here, to attempt to avoid having to contact my broker to flatten my position during a power outage or internet outage, or to lessen the number of times it occurs, I decided to purchase a new Uninterruptible Power Supply and to utilize a backup secondary internet connection service.

And I thought this was the best time to focus on that, after the margin requirements have recently doubled and then increased to 5x after the Coronovirus panic. I decided to hold off from trading the markets live for a week or so and to try to get my safety nets set up. And during that time, I've also been trying to learn about Computer Networks and other such things, that I should know, to be able to better handle power outages and internet outages in my area.

That is why my questions in my different posts might have been kind of all over the place.

I appreciate all the replies and info. They are very helpful.

i2w8am9ii2

[i2w8am9ii2]

Hi bltdavid,

Thanks so much for taking the time to give a well defined detailed explanation.

I'll need to re-read your post and those posts by marcus2300 and brucerobinson to fully comprehend the information.

Again, I appreciate it very much.

i2w8am9ii2

[brucerobinson]

yeah, define the problem at the outset :-) Seems like you were in danger of throwing money & tech at a problem you don't have (speed problem, bandwidth problem, wifi coverage problem, you name it, you got answers for it all. We learn something new every day, whether we want to or not).

Once you've read and digested how all the good info you've been provided with hangs together re: ISP speed and bandwidth, your LAN and WLAN speeds & bandwidth, multi-band WLANs & bandwidth and all that jazz, the following may be good to know (practical examples/experiences).

IF a summary of your needs is that you just need a 'good enough' connection and home network to manually trade Futures, then in today's level of tech in most locations almost anything will do. To give you a real life practical scenario - I have a 5Mbs connection (BLT talks about a 25Mbs connection as a slow one - oh I wish, in my dreams you lucky people!) and the last few miles of telecoms infrastructure was built in Victorian times, I use a dual band wifi in the home using the 5GHz only for my trading pc (I agree with the advice as good to hard-wire into your modem if practical, but giving you an example of what if you can't....wifi is pretty solid these days) and live in Blighty so there's no shortening that hop across the pond. Marcus gets 150ms to IQ servers from Europe, I got 104ms yesterday to CQGs and that's typical for me. And I'd hazard a guess his infrastructure may be better than mine, and also that if I hard-wired into a 10Gb ethernet setup it would still be around 104ms. As Marcus said, a crappy hotel connection is good enough. Before going rural I wired directly into my modem and the telecoms exchange box was feet away from my front door on Superfast optical. Don't notice a difference for trading for my setup. When I relocated I was without landline for a few weeks and I used wifi tethering to my 3G cell phone connection and it was fine. That may be helpful for you to know as a backup solution to your real problem which you describe as landline connection drop-outs leaving you with an orphaned position on.

Dancing on a pinhead. There will be those that need co-location servers to ping CME at 1ms, or big fat pipes for backtest data download, but not you.

Seems like you know all you need to know (and, if needs other than trading require more, how to go about it and the implications for your trading setup)

Seemingly frequent loss of connection seems in this day and age something that should be unusual, shouldn't need to be tolerated/accommodated and something you might want to/benefit from exploring further - but it may not be unusual where you are. The telecoms provider can do something about it - either the physical infrastructure, or the software that manages the network to make it more resilient (if you have frequent drops in your modem history, with my provider a simple 'reset' at their end helps. With my provider they were accommodating in tweaking their end to give me reliability in preference to speed, a minor cost in terms of speed (personal experience is how I know my lines have aluminium - dreadful apparently - when I moved here I had dropped connections all the time: apparently heavy rain causes it to corrode, sub-zero loosens it etc fragility makes working on it risky etc. but no budget to upgrade, so said the engineer. Took them several visits and days work up and down telegraph poles but now a dropped connection is rare). You'd probably have to push hard to get them to act, my experience in the UK at least but no idea of your own circumstances.

Just further food for thought, hope it helps.

Good luck

[i2w8am9ii2]

Hi brucerobinson,

Yes, you are right, it is important to define the problem clearly at the outset.

I wake up at 2:00 am during the weekdays to trade the markets, and I was adding other things to my schedule during the last two weeks, so I was exhausted from pushing myself each day... so my focus was not there.

Thanks for the info. I will read through it again and proceed from there afterwards.

I appreciate the help.

i2w8am9ii2

[i2w8am9ii2]

Hi marcus2300,

Great. Thanks for the info and for the URL.

Take care,

i2w8am9ii2