What speed test should I use for a trading proxy?

Forget bandwidth speed tests like Speedtest.net — they measure throughput, not latency. For trading, the relevant metric is round-trip time (RTT) to your broker's server. Use 'ping your-broker-server.com' in a terminal for 60 seconds to get RTT and jitter values that actually reflect trading performance.

What is a good ping for trading?

For position traders and swing traders: under 200 ms is fine. For day traders on 15m+ charts: under 100 ms is comfortable. For scalpers and news traders: under 50 ms is the target, under 20 ms is good. Jitter (the variation between pings) matters as much as average RTT.

Why is my proxy ping higher than my direct connection?

A proxy adds two network legs instead of one: your connection to the proxy node, then the proxy node to the broker. The total RTT is the sum of both legs. If the proxy node is co-located near the broker (like TradersProxy's LD4 node for London brokers), the second leg is very short and total RTT can be lower than your home ISP's indirect routing.

How do I test if my proxy is actually routing through the correct node?

Open a browser while the proxy is active and visit an IP lookup service (e.g., whatismyip.com). The exit IP should match the TradersProxy node IP shown in your portal. If your home IP appears, the proxy is not routing the browser traffic — check your platform's proxy configuration.

Should I measure latency with or without the proxy active?

Measure both. First, ping the broker server directly (proxy off) to get your baseline ISP RTT. Then configure the proxy and ping again. The comparison tells you whether the proxy is helping or adding overhead. If the proxy RTT is lower, your ISP routing is indirect and the proxy is taking a better path.

Tool · Connection testing

Trading proxy speed test — how to measure RTT to your broker.

Speedtest.net measures bandwidth. Traders need to measure latency. This guide shows you how to run the right test, what the numbers mean, and how to compare direct vs proxy performance for your exact broker.

Why bandwidth tests don't matter for trading

A 100 Mbps connection and a 10 Mbps connection perform identically for MT4, MT5, and cTrader order flow. Trading terminals send tiny packets — an order send is under 200 bytes. Bandwidth is irrelevant at that scale.

What matters is round-trip time (RTT) — how long a packet takes to reach your broker's server and come back. And jitter — the variation in that time. High jitter means inconsistent fills even when average RTT looks acceptable.

How to measure RTT to your broker

Run this in a terminal (Windows Command Prompt, macOS Terminal, or Linux shell). Replace the hostname with your actual broker's MT server address:

Windows ping -n 60 your-broker-mt-server.com macOS / Linux ping -c 60 your-broker-mt-server.com

Run for 60 seconds to get a representative average. A 5-second test gives misleading results.

The output will show minimum, average, and maximum RTT, plus packet loss. The number to watch is the standard deviation or jitter — the variation between your best and worst pings is what shows up in your fills.

How to interpret your results

Under 30 ms averageExcellent for all trading styles including scalping. Jitter under 5 ms here is very clean.

30–80 ms averageGood for day trading, intraday, and position trading. Marginal for fast scalping.

80–150 ms averageAcceptable for swing trading and position sizing. Not suitable for scalping or news trading.

150–250 ms averageProblematic for any active trading style. Consider routing improvement.

Over 250 ms averageSerious execution risk on any time frame. VPS co-location or proxy routing is needed.

High jitter (>20 ms variation)Even with low average RTT, high jitter produces inconsistent fills. Often more damaging than high average RTT.

How to test with the proxy active

The proxy itself cannot be pinged directly from MT4 — the SOCKS5 tunnel is transparent to the platform. Instead, test in two steps:

Direct test (proxy off): Run the 60-second ping to your broker server from your home connection. Record average RTT and jitter.
Proxy test (proxy on): Configure TradersProxy in MT4/MT5 settings. Then run the same ping again from your terminal. On Windows, the terminal ping does not go through MT4's proxy — it tests your direct connection. The useful comparison is to run the ping from the proxy node itself, which you can do via an SSH session to a VPS near the TradersProxy node.

The practical shortcut: check the MT4 connection speed shown in the bottom-right status bar after enabling the proxy. This is MT4's actual measured RTT to the broker server through the proxy tunnel.

What TradersProxy does to your connection

TradersProxy nodes are co-located at Equinix LD4 (London), NY4 (New Jersey), TY3 (Tokyo), SY4 (Sydney), and SG1 (Singapore). For traders in South Asia, Southeast Asia, or Africa connecting to London brokers:

Direct home ISP path to LD4: typically 160–250 ms with 30–80 ms jitter on peak hours
Via TradersProxy LD4 node: the TradersProxy-to-LD4 segment is under 2 ms (same campus). Your total RTT is home-to-TradersProxy-node + ~2 ms. The proxy replaces the variable ISP transit segment with a clean, direct data-centre connection.

The improvement is most visible in jitter reduction during high-volatility events, where ISP routing instability typically adds 20–80 ms of extra variation.

Proxy speed test FAQ

Forget bandwidth speed tests like Speedtest.net — they measure throughput, not latency. For trading, the relevant metric is round-trip time (RTT) to your broker's server. Use 'ping your-broker-server.com' in a terminal for 60 seconds to get RTT and jitter values that actually reflect trading performance.
For position traders and swing traders: under 200 ms is fine. For day traders on 15m+ charts: under 100 ms is comfortable. For scalpers and news traders: under 50 ms is the target, under 20 ms is good. Jitter (the variation between pings) matters as much as average RTT.
A proxy adds two network legs instead of one: your connection to the proxy node, then the proxy node to the broker. The total RTT is the sum of both legs. If the proxy node is co-located near the broker (like TradersProxy's LD4 node for London brokers), the second leg is very short and total RTT can be lower than your home ISP's indirect routing.
Open a browser while the proxy is active and visit an IP lookup service (e.g., whatismyip.com). The exit IP should match the TradersProxy node IP shown in your portal. If your home IP appears, the proxy is not routing the browser traffic — check your platform's proxy configuration.
Measure both. First, ping the broker server directly (proxy off) to get your baseline ISP RTT. Then configure the proxy and ping again. The comparison tells you whether the proxy is helping or adding overhead. If the proxy RTT is lower, your ISP routing is indirect and the proxy is taking a better path.