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Online trading - is a redundant connection neccessary?

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Beenjammin

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<*C * R * R * E * E * E * A * K * K> (sound of rusty hinges as an ancient thread re-opens....small dust eddys form around the keyboard.... a musty smell emerges from the darker recesses of the monitor........somewhere in the distance, a dog howls.....whats that noise outside the window? Whats that shadow on your blind?)

OK Ive resurrected this old thread to see what changes have occurred out the in the past few years.

I've recently started trading for a living from home. Im in a major eastern states City in Australia. I have this deep rooted terror of losing my internet connection at a critical moment in trading and not being able to close off a vulnerable position, set a stop loss after placing a big order, or getting cut off halfway through legging into a multiple position hedged options strategy, leaving myself lying there naked (like a body in a tomb....Anyone picked up on my musical tastes yet? Prize to the first correct answer....

Questions:
  • Who would be the most reliable internet provider? Currently Im on TLS broadband cable.
  • Is it worth investing in a redundant internet connection?
  • Is Satellite worth it or is it still too dodgy?
  • If so, what are the most appropriate options?
  • Am I just being paranoid?
 
G'Day,

No you're not being paranoid, my broadband connection occasionally plays up at the worst possible time . Sometimes i have to revert to dialup on my rusty old laptop as my main computer hasn’t got a dial up modem.

I’m actually waiting for my local retailer to stock the netgear 3g router (mbr624gu) so I can use a prepaid 3g modem plugged into the router purely as a backup system.
 

We are also in a major Eastern state. Our primary internet connection is also Telstra Bigpond Cable.

We have never had our Internet connection drop out at a critical moment, however, I have just finished completing the setup and configuration of a redundant broadband connection to minimize the impact of a critical outage. In my experience, Telstra Broadband Cable is an extremely reliable service since there are relatively few users. Outages are extremely rare - I can't recall the last time there was an outage.

I've used satellite in the past and found it unreliable, particularly in bad weather.

Our redundant connection is ADSL, fed into a dual-WAN router so that fallback is transparent.

If being paranoid - consider your broker's platform going down at a critical moment, and also consider loss of power to your PC at a critical moment.
 
Beenjammin said:
[*]Am I just being paranoid?
Click to expand...


for this reason I have an Exetel HSPA plan

No contract
$25 for the sim
$ 5 per month for activation (must use occasionally in a 3 month period, but plan to set up a VOIP mobile anyhow)

Had a e169 modem (otherwise about $160 new for one)

Works well for me in my travels
 
Touching a bit on what MichaelD mentioned.

I would also consider looking at back up power supplies for your computer aswell if you're that concerned about loosing a connection at a critical time.

They are relatively inexpensive and can generally power your computer for an hour or so...

For a back up connection if you did want one, i think you can now get prepaid usb modems that you could use in an emergency...

Hope this helps!
 
Sith1s said:
For a back up connection if you did want one, i think you can now get prepaid usb modems that you could use in an emergency.
Click to expand...

yeah you can get a 3 USB modem with 2Gb plan for $20 / month. set it up on your pc then if your net goes down just plug the usb key in and connect it up. pretty cheap peace of mind.
 
Thanks everyone! Good advice all round. It looks like Im off to buy a 3G USB modem. Dunno about prepaid though, being paranoid I'm worried it'll run out of credit.......

Thanks also MichaelD - you've reminded me to look for an Uninterruptable Power Supply for when blackout season rolls around. (I was actually contemplating getting some solar panels for the house, which require a big battery bank....this calls for further investigation, I could kill two proverbial birds here).

Ive already got a bootable USB thumb drive, and a portable USB hard drive with Windows, Office and Nortons ready to go, and keep my data on a separate physical hard drive, just in case. Was thinkng about going Mac for ease of use and the fact very few people bother to write virus's for them. I'll start up another thread on that if anyone has any advice.

Thanks again!
 
disarray said:
yeah you can get a 3 USB modem with 2Gb plan for $20 / month. set it up on your pc then if your net goes down just plug the usb key in and connect it up. pretty cheap peace of mind.
Click to expand...

i have a laptop which does the trading.

i also have a 3g as a backup if things go bad.

however, i have to know theyve gone bad to be able to change over the connection. if im out, or asleep - there could be trouble.

is there any computer experts out there who know of a way to have a secondary system kick in?

someone above mentioned a modem (netgear 3g router) - would that do what i was talking about above?
 
Stormin_Norman said:
someone above mentioned a modem (netgear 3g router) - would that do what i was talking about above?
Click to expand...
Norman, congrats on your success. I've followed your progress quite closely and I'm very happy to see you're beginning to reap the financial rewards of the hard work.

For your style of trading where downtime of 5 minutes could materially impact the performance of your returns and given its designed to be run automatically via a program, you need a seamless alternative.

First of all, any electronics you require to be functioning to trade, need to be connected to a UPS, or bank of UPS sufficient to last the longest time you expect to leave it operating without being in attendance (plus a margin of safety).

Second of all, you need an almost instant redundant connection that kicks in automatically and relies on a different mode of connection and ISP. For example, it'd be useless relying on two different ADSL connections.
3g is good, but make sure the providers infrastructure is different. For example, having Bigpond cable and a Telstra 3g adapter isn't a wonderful idea. Also, you may not want to use a Telstra 3g adapter and an ADSL provider that just resells a rebadged telstra connection.

There are several fairly straightforward ways of setting up cheap redundant internet connections for the home and I'd be very surprised if your coding comrade doesn't have the expertise to set it up for you once you've done the leg work to research which providers to go with.
 
good logic there doctor.

i havent actually asked/discussed it with him in depth yet. i suppose i should.

is it possible to create a program (or is there one) which recognises that the internet connection is down and switches to 3G?

what language would it need to be made in?

thanks for the kind words. but i still cant forgive fulham for drawing with liverpool @ anfield.
 
Why don't people trade with bracket orders placed on execution and held in market or at the broker end?

If you are trading short term that's the only way to go. Even with a redundant connection you still may have problems logging your trading software back in.
 
If it makes you feel better we were atrocious last night against Hull.

I don't think it'd be a case of creating software, but a case of installing one of many existing free pieces of software. (Or I believe it could be done with a cheap Linux box very easily).
 
I don't think it'd be a case of creating software, but a case of installing one of many existing free pieces of software.
Click to expand...

do you know of any software which (claims to) undertake this task?
 
Stormin_Norman said:
do you know of any software which (claims to) undertake this task?
Click to expand...
Not off the top of my head, but if they're not numerous and readily available, I'll eat my shoe (and the streets of London aren't the cleanest in the world)
 

TH, think you should spoon feed the people what a bracket order is & why its a must for short term. !!!
 
If my internet connection went down while I was in a risky trade I would call my broker and tell them to close the trade. then I would stop trading until the problem was fixed (until I had switched to a more reliable isp ).
 
If you were treating your trading as a real business, you would obviously have a redundant internet connection and computer equipment in the event BOTH fails at once. Along with certain basic strategies such as STOP LOSS in every opened trades for something like this.

Do it like an engineer and write out a risk matrix table and start evaluating the possibilities/consequences along with mitigation strategies.

P.S: What happens if you were so sick that you could not get on to your computer for days?
 
I use Telstra cable broadband, no real problems, bit slow on the odd occasion, was struck by lightning and that caused alot of problems and i was offline for while but that occured at night so i had no positions.

I now have a USB key from 3, cost $249 is not on contract just PAYG but that was with 12GB and i have 12 months to use it by, can pay to re charge, has been very useful particualy if you go away, only problem is coverage, in the main urban areas its fine but out in the country there is limited or no coverage.

Never had to use it for back up at home if Telstra went down though, think it would be very rare but its always good to have a second source just in case.
 
Just further on redundancy,

You can get Dual-WAN routers which will automatically sense if an internet connection is down and then switch to the other. I personally use a Netgear FVS336G which will seamlessly switch between Internet connections if one goes down...however this does not translate into seamless connection to your broker, as their end will notice that you've changed IP addresses. This applies to all redundant 'net connection methods.

It works for us as we execute manually and just need to log back in.

There are specific dual WAN routers which support USB modems - DrayTek make a good range of them and I recall taking a very long look at them before deciding on the router I chose.

Having said all of that, IMO by far the most significant risks are power interruption and computer glitches, hence we have two computers accessible to trade on, one of which is protected by a UPS (and the other of which will have a UPS added soon - next equity peak). The entire path from computer -> internet is protected with a UPS which will give us 30 minutes of power, plenty of time for our trading requirements.
 
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