Short take: wire it.
Wi-Fi works fine for browsing, and it works acceptably for trading most of the time. The problem is variability. A neighbor's router starts using the same channel, a microwave runs, someone starts a video call in the next room, and latency jumps from 15 ms to 200 ms for a few seconds.
Ethernet gives a stable, predictable link. The extra cost is a cable. The benefit shows up as fewer outliers in order execution times, even if the average barely changes.
If a cable can't be run, powerline adapters are a compromise, although they have their own interference issues. A mesh network with a dedicated wired backhaul beats a single router in a far corner of the house.
Plenty of traders blame their broker for slow fills when the culprit sits between the computer and the router.
What improvement, if any, was noticed after switching from wireless to wired?
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Wi-Fi versus Ethernet
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Amanhasnoname
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- Joined: Fri Oct 30, 2026 9:45 am
Re: Wi-Fi versus Ethernet
I made the switch about eighteen months ago and the average ping barely changed, just as you say. On wireless I was seeing around 20 ms to my broker's server most of the time and on the cable it dropped to about 16. That alone wouldn't have been worth crawling under a desk for.
The difference was in the bad moments. I started logging ping every few seconds for a week on each, and on Wi-Fi there were dozens of spikes above 150 ms each day, with a cluster every evening when the rest of the house was streaming. On Ethernet I had maybe two or three all week, and those looked like they came from my internet provider rather than anything at home.
My trading room is far from the router, so I tried powerline adapters first. They were better than Wi-Fi but still had odd drops whenever the washing machine was on. In the end I ran a long flat cable along the skirting board, and fills around the London open became noticeably more consistent.
The difference was in the bad moments. I started logging ping every few seconds for a week on each, and on Wi-Fi there were dozens of spikes above 150 ms each day, with a cluster every evening when the rest of the house was streaming. On Ethernet I had maybe two or three all week, and those looked like they came from my internet provider rather than anything at home.
My trading room is far from the router, so I tried powerline adapters first. They were better than Wi-Fi but still had odd drops whenever the washing machine was on. In the end I ran a long flat cable along the skirting board, and fills around the London open became noticeably more consistent.