Brokers and VPS providers advertise latency figures, but they often measure different things.
Common numbers:
Ping: network round-trip time from your computer or VPS to the broker's server. Often 1–5 ms from a nearby VPS, 20–80 ms from home.
Execution time: time from the server receiving the order to confirming the fill. Depends on the broker's systems and liquidity providers.
Total order latency: ping plus execution time plus platform processing.
For most manual scalpers, differences of 20–50 ms in ping matter much less than execution time and slippage. For automated strategies reacting to fast price changes, network latency becomes more important.
MT5 shows ping in the status bar; execution time can be estimated from order timestamps in the journal.
Have you measured both ping and execution time with your broker?
I measured both on my setup last quarter, and the gap surprised me. Ping from the VPS sat around 2 ms, but the journal timestamps showed order to fill averaging 38 ms, with the slowest 5 percent above 120 ms.
Those slow fills clustered around London open and the first minute after data. So the number on the status bar was nearly useless for the moments I care about most.
From home my ping was about 45 ms, and I expected that to be the bigger difference. On market orders during calm hours, fill quality between home and VPS was almost identical, which matches your point about manual scalpers.
One measurement trap is clock drift between the terminal and the server. If the VPS clock is off by even 50 ms, any execution time worked out from mixed timestamps is noise, so I only compare server times with server times.
Has anyone compared execution time on limit orders versus market orders with the same broker? My sample of limits is still too small to say anything useful.
