When needing a stable and fast connection to IB is imperative!. I'd like to know your experience or opinion about what you consider the best ones. Here there are a couple that I was told to check: 1. https://www.speedytradingservers.com/prices/ 2. https://fxvm.net/en/forex-vps-hosting 3. https://www.hetzner.com/ 4. Amazon but found contradictory reviews Thanks in advance
Being that you're referencing hetzner, I'm assuming you're not in US and therefore probably not connecting to IB's US servers. You should probably state which server location you need to connect to. Here's my personal observations on the company's you referenced: 1) There are so many typos on their site, that I'd not take them seriously. In fact, I'd probably not bother with any VPS providers who even reference trading as they're likely small shops operating out of a larger data center. I'd want to go to whoever actually manages the physical machines and network I'm connected to. 2) I'd avoid anything focusing on FX even more so than generic trading oriented VPS companies 3) I know some europeans who use and like Hetzner for non trading activities, but I have no experience with them. 4) I have extensive experience with AWS, but their region that's closest to IB's US servers (us-east-1) seems to have problems far more than other regions. I'd probably go with us-west-2 if I were to use amazon. Another VPS provider I've had good experience with (not trading related) is Linode, but they've had outages in the past related to DDoS attacks. In summary, my recommendation is to define where you need to connect and then ask around on non-trading forums for stable VPS companies in the same or near by data centers that you want to connect to. I'm suggesting stability is more important than latency because in say the NYC region, you're likely going to experience no more than a 5ms difference between providers when connecting to IB (US). If that's going to make or break your algo, then you probably should also consider looking at dedicated (or colocated) servers rather than VPS so you don't have to deal with random scheduling latency issues that happen with VPSes from time to time, but then you start getting in to even more cost because you'd probably want redundancy, etc.
Thanks Lee for your elaborated answer from experience, I really appreciate it. You're right, I connect from Europe to IB's servers in Switzerland, if I find that the very best VPS is for US servers, I think it's possible to change account's server previous request obviously. Despite of I'm not using any HFT yet, I do need a high-speed connection for my intraday purposes. I'll continue searching all the variations suggested. Thanks!
I'm not going to say the best VPS servers are in the US. Maybe they are, but I think you should pick based on where you're connecting to (IB US vs IB Switzerland vs IB HK for examples). Furthermore, you should pick which IB servers you're connecting to based on what you're trading. If you're primarily trading US assets, it may be beneficial to switch to IB US servers because ultimately that data is moving US exchanges -> IB Switzerland -> your server -> IB Switzerland -> US exchanges. Switching to IB US + US VPS means your data is traveling across fewer networks. Less hops means less chance of routing issues, physical link problems, or even natural disasters from impacting your connection. Granted if you're trading primarily european assets, then I'd stick with IB Switzerland and get a server in that general region.
Shouldn't he be choosing based on instruments he trade? If US stocks and US futures , he should switch to IB data server in US and a VPS host in US.
Regardless instruments you trade, all orders should go first through IB's servers. There is not any DMA.
I'm using "speedy" to connect to IB, I know the website looks ramshackle but I haven't had any problems and the support is responsive.
Just don't use a VPS. There are many affordable dedicated servers. A VPS hypervisor can freeze your instance for many reasons and this can have a huge impact in your trading.