Jitter beats latency
Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2026 10:30 am
Jitter beats latency
Two connections. One has a steady 60 milliseconds. The other averages 30 milliseconds but occasionally jumps to 400. Which is better for scalping?
Usually the steady one. Strategies can be designed around a known delay. Random spikes, on the other hand, ruin entries and exits at the worst moments.
Wi-Fi is the classic source of jitter. Interference, router load, and distance all change from second to second. A wired connection is nearly always more stable, even if the average speed is the same.
Other sources include background downloads, cloud backups, and video calls on the same network. One scheduled backup at 14:00 GMT has probably cost someone a trade.
A simple test is to run a continuous ping to the broker's server for an hour and look at the distribution. The max and the 99th percentile tell more than the average.
For serious scalping, a wired line, a dedicated machine, and a VPS in the right location remove most of the variance.
What does the ping distribution look like on the current setup, and when do the spikes occur?
Two connections. One has a steady 60 milliseconds. The other averages 30 milliseconds but occasionally jumps to 400. Which is better for scalping?
Usually the steady one. Strategies can be designed around a known delay. Random spikes, on the other hand, ruin entries and exits at the worst moments.
Wi-Fi is the classic source of jitter. Interference, router load, and distance all change from second to second. A wired connection is nearly always more stable, even if the average speed is the same.
Other sources include background downloads, cloud backups, and video calls on the same network. One scheduled backup at 14:00 GMT has probably cost someone a trade.
A simple test is to run a continuous ping to the broker's server for an hour and look at the distribution. The max and the 99th percentile tell more than the average.
For serious scalping, a wired line, a dedicated machine, and a VPS in the right location remove most of the variance.
What does the ping distribution look like on the current setup, and when do the spikes occur?