Exchange Server Locations

[Seal]

I'm interested in finding out the server locations for each major broker out there:

MtGox
Tradehill
Intersango
Cryptoxchange

I understand that for optimal trade execution performance, ideally you want to be as close to the servers as possible. Yes, I've tried performing a whois however I'm confused by some of the results which point to routing which is performed by 3rd party 'cloud based firewall' services.

Does anyone know the infrastructure of the brokers and how it would affect performance? I've heard cryptoxchange uses cloud based hosting, so what would this mean if I was seek the fastest trade execution? Where would I (or my server) have to be?

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[grue]

even if the exchange is half way around the world, the max ping you'll get is 350ms. 

[Seal]

even if the exchange is half way around the world, the max ping you'll get is 350ms. 

Quick compared to the speed of my mouse clicks, slow for an arbitrage script. Sorry I should have stated that my intentions were for an arbitrage script.

[rjk]

even if the exchange is half way around the world, the max ping you'll get is 350ms. 

Quick compared to the speed of my mouse clicks, slow for an arbitrage script. Sorry I should have stated that my intentions were for an arbitrage script.

http://bitvps.com... 25ms to Mtgox, and never oversold.

[nmat]

25ms to Mtgox

On a good day

All exchanges have severe speed problems. Any advantage that you might have because of your location is probably lost as soon as the real action begins.

[phorensic]

If you are comparing bitcoin markets to HFT, like on wall street, then you are wasting your time.  You will not gain anything by having a better ping time to a bitcoin exchange.  The servers are simply not fast enough, not reliable enough, etc to make a difference.  They don't run on platforms where response times are important.

[petala]

I have heard that Tradehill are located in cuba, mtgox in japan, intersango in england and cryptoxchange in australia ?

[DeathAndTaxes]

If you are comparing bitcoin markets to HFT, like on wall street, then you are wasting your time.  You will not gain anything by having a better ping time to a bitcoin exchange.  The servers are simply not fast enough, not reliable enough, etc to make a difference.  They don't run on platforms where response times are important.

Not only that the markets are not as "perfect".

A perfect (mostly theoretical) market is one where products are perfectly priced.  Nothing is ever sold overvalue or undervalue.  There are no arbitrage possibilities.

If US stock markets in the 1970s were a 7 on the "perfect" scale then today they are maybe a 8 or 9.  This is why you see HFT, low latency links, companies paying MASSIVE bandwidth fees to get a 5ms shorter hop to london (google Hibernia Atlantic), etc.

As the market gets closer and closer to perfect it requires greater and greater "schemes" to gain a slight advantage on competitors.

Bitcoin is nowhere near that.  Hell I am not a speculator and when advised of an arbitrage opportunity (via the forums a couple hours after it happened) I manually moved funds between Mt Gox and Tradehill took a quick 2% profit and the opportunity lasted for hours longer.

[Seal]

I have heard that Tradehill are located in cuba, mtgox in japan, intersango in england and cryptoxchange in australia ?

From what I've read, MtGox as a company (and its developers) are based in Japan. Doing an IP lookup, their servers point to Florida, USA??? I guess it would make sense that they would locate their servers in USA as that is where most of the trading occurs however I want more of a definitive location.

[Seal]

If you are comparing bitcoin markets to HFT, like on wall street, then you are wasting your time.  You will not gain anything by having a better ping time to a bitcoin exchange.  The servers are simply not fast enough, not reliable enough, etc to make a difference.  They don't run on platforms where response times are important.

Not only that the markets are not as "perfect".

A perfect (mostly theoretical) market is one where products are perfectly priced.  Nothing is ever sold overvalue or undervalue.  There are no arbitrage possibilities.

If US stock markets in the 1970s were a 7 on the "perfect" scale then today they are maybe a 8 or 9.  This is why you see HFT, low latency links, companies paying MASSIVE bandwidth fees to get a 5ms shorter hop to london (google Hibernia Atlantic), etc.

As the market gets closer and closer to perfect it requires greater and greater "schemes" to gain a slight advantage on competitors.

Bitcoin is nowhere near that.  Hell I am not a speculator and when advised of an arbitrage opportunity (via the forums a couple hours after it happened) I manually moved funds between Mt Gox and Tradehill took a quick 2% profit and the opportunity lasted for hours longer.

You both have valid points. However I respectfully disagree with you phorensic: I'm running an arbitrage script from Australia and to the main exchanges, my round trip time for a query+response is on average a shocking 1 second, if a trade is placed then this will add another 1 second. I'm not after sub 5ms response times, however it could easily be improved.

I'm mainly performing a lot of small trades as an experiment although I have experienced slippage (when the order you want to place no longer exists when you try and execute it). Admittedly there wasn't too much at loss as I'm more doing this our of interest as I enjoy scripting.

[phorensic]

If you are at 1,000ms RTT then we are talking about orders of magnitude differences here.  I was assuming you were trying to reduce the impact of the speed of light by getting physically closer to the exchanges, such as the HFT datacenters in the buildings close to the NYSE.  What you need is a better ISP my friend!  I'm 12ms away from Gox on our work DS3 and 25ms away on residential cable in SoCal.