Is a dedicated line better than cloud VPS for retail scalping?

[LondonScalper]

Dedicated line vs cloud VPS for retail scalping

I have tried both: a home fibre “gaming” setup and a cheap cloud VPS near the broker’s matching engine city. The honest answer for discretionary M1 work: location and stability usually beat raw download speed at home, but a bad VPS is worse than a clean local connection.

What I measure:

• Ping / route consistency to the broker endpoint (not speedtest to random CDN)
• Platform freeze count during London open
• Fill quality on the same pair/session for two weeks each path
• Cost of the VPS vs any improvement in median slip

Dedicated lines sound serious; for most retail size the bottleneck is often broker path and your own click discipline, not the last mile. Still, if you are co-locating mentally with “every millisecond,” prove it with a log — do not buy infrastructure on folklore.

What have you measured that actually changed your setup?