Trading latency and jitter guides.

Learn what latency really means for traders, how to measure it, and why jitter often matters more than a single fast ping.

Most retail traders know latency exists. Fewer understand what it actually consists of — the propagation delay across physical cable, the processing overhead at each router hop, the queuing time inside the broker's matching engine. These are not interchangeable. You can have fast average ping with terrible jitter, and a jittery connection will produce inconsistent fills far more reliably than a slow but stable one.

The guides in this section start from definitions and build toward diagnosis. If you want to understand what a 40ms RTT actually means for a scalp entry, start with what is trading latency. If you already know the vocabulary and want to measure your own broker connection, go straight to how to measure broker latency or the latency by broker reference page. If you are trying to understand why your fills are inconsistent despite a low average ping, the latency vs jitter guide is the right starting point.