It is common for brokers demo accounts to perform differently from their live accounts. There can be a number of reasons for this, like, spread, slippage, requotes and connection speed to name a few.
Today I want to focus on broker connection speed, which is also known as “latency”. This is how long it takes your PC to connect to the brokers servers via your Meta Trader 4 account.
Depending on the trading style your system or EA uses, the latency can be very important e.g. if you are scalping the market then every second and every price movement is vital to capatilize on, while if you’re a posistion trader then you can expect to be in the trade for a while which means you don’t need to worry so much about the smaller movements in price or execution time.
So, how do you work out your brokers latency? Well, it’s actually quite easy.
Whether you are using a Virtual Private Server (VPS) or your home PC, the process is the same as described below:
- Navigate to your MT4 folder in your C: drive.
- Open it up and then open the “config” folder.
- In the “config” folder look for a file that has the same name as your brokers live server (this normally has “real” or “live” in the name; or if you want to test a demo accounts latency then look for the relevant demo account)
- Open up the file and scroll along until you see something that looks like an IP address, e.g. 235.256.458.23.
- Note this number down somewhere. It usually has two numbers at the end after the “:” sign. Ignore these two numbers. They are not needed.
- Click “Start” on your PC and locate your “cmd.exe” program. You can do this by typing in “cmd” to the search box (Windows 7). Then open this program.
- Where the cursor is, type the word “ping” then hit space and type the IP address you noted down earlier and hit “Enter”
- Your computer will then ping the brokers server and list on the screen the latency which is usually noted in milliseconds, e.g. 33ms for 33 milliseconds.
And that’s it!
If you have more than one broker you’d like to test this against, just repeat the steps above.
One EA that we have found is broker and latency dependent is Million Dollar Pips. A list of broker and latency combinations that work with Million Dollar Pips is listed here.
Some broker block the ping request. beside ping, any other method to test it?
Hi Micheal,
I don’t think so, maybe someone else knows.
Where is the list of borker and latency combinations that work with MDP? Is it coming?
I’ve started it at the bottom of the post above.
Sorry, just realised that I thought I was posting the above on the MDP post. The table is at the bottom of the MDP post found here:
http://www.forexreviewsrated.com/2011/million-dollar-pips/#forward
Hi Cam,
Is an average latency of 134ms is good latency?
Nah, I’d avoid that.
Hi Cam – what would you consider to be good latency?
I would say anything under 45ms would be worth testing… However the lower the better obviously.
Mother of all noob questions…
the lower the number in ms the better.. right?
Hi,
You can use “Ex Test for Expat” EA to get the speed test done. It will place and cancel test orders on your account and spit out a report.
SG Tiger
Hi SG Tiger
Do you know where “Ex Test for Expat” EA can be found? Google gives nothing…!
Best regards
http://forex-expats.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ExTest-ForExpat.zip
Try here.
Can someone who knows say which broker VPS combinations work?… on the list the thinkforex has no VPS provider named ? i would like to use thinkforex if possible… i have a VPS but i have no idea if my VPS would work well with it for this BOT… can anyone say which VPS would work? thanks D
Hi Cam,
I just use Gomarkets with swvps(london serve), and Gomarkets has london serve and the latency is 2ms(other serve like syndey is 300ms), but result is very bad and is very different with your shown account. i donot know why.
Hi Cams, If using the method above to find out the latency, from config file, ex live server, that ip add refers to which server in the mt4 as there are a few servers we can choose… so how do I know I am checking with the right server? Thanks
See which server you are logged into in MT4. The names of the server files should be the same as in MT4. Then change your Data Center to the one closest to your PC.
Thanks Cam. I wanna ask you also if I open the config folder with the same broker and server, one open with my home pc, the other open inside vps, the ip add in the config folder is different from home and vps. So that config folder, the ip is variable according to where you open, true? Thanks.
Yeah, I noticed the same a while ago. That one had me stumped.
the ip should be the same if you are connected to the same DC.
Well I dont see any IP address in any config folder file. So where do we go from here/