Ping is not the whole story: jitter and packet loss matter more
Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2026 4:58 am
A low ping number looks impressive, but it hides the thing that hurts scalpers most: inconsistency. A connection with a steady forty milliseconds can be better than one that averages twenty but sometimes spikes to five hundred.
The variation in latency is called jitter. Packet loss, where some data never arrives, makes things worse by forcing retransmission and delay. Both can affect order execution, price updates, and the ability to close a trade in time.
Testing for them is simple. Running a continuous ping for an hour at a busy time of day and logging the minimum, maximum, and standard deviation shows far more than a single reading.
Common causes include congested home networks, wireless interference, and shared connections. Switching to a wired connection and closing bandwidth-heavy applications often improves things noticeably.
A stable connection beats a fast one, and the right measurement is the worst case, not the average.
What does your connection's worst-case latency look like during busy market hours?
The variation in latency is called jitter. Packet loss, where some data never arrives, makes things worse by forcing retransmission and delay. Both can affect order execution, price updates, and the ability to close a trade in time.
Testing for them is simple. Running a continuous ping for an hour at a busy time of day and logging the minimum, maximum, and standard deviation shows far more than a single reading.
Common causes include congested home networks, wireless interference, and shared connections. Switching to a wired connection and closing bandwidth-heavy applications often improves things noticeably.
A stable connection beats a fast one, and the right measurement is the worst case, not the average.
What does your connection's worst-case latency look like during busy market hours?