How to test shaped vs unshaped

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psudan

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Hi,

I do online trading on the US market and I always thought that I really needed an unshaped connection. I have an uncapped/unshapped line with Mweb at R2K/month and earlier this month when Seacom went down I switch for few days to my backup Telkom DO3 shaped and I must admit I did not really see a difference, my trading software behave normally.

Is there is a way to test/measure the difference/impact between the 2?

Speedtest and pingtest shows more or less the same result.

Thanks,
Phil
 
You really should try a cheaper option.

Openweb gold for 786 or something. Mweb home is perfect. Shaping is not bad for international website and traffic. It is flying at the moment.

You are wasting serious money if you ask me. Unless you do a lot of pirate stuff then check out a cheaper option.
 
psudan said:
Hi,

I do online trading on the US market and I always thought that I really needed an unshaped connection. I have an uncapped/unshapped line with Mweb at R2K/month and earlier this month when Seacom went down I switch for few days to my backup Telkom DO3 shaped and I must admit I did not really see a difference, my trading software behave normally.

Is there is a way to test/measure the difference/impact between the 2?

Speedtest and pingtest shows more or less the same result.

Thanks,
Phil
Click to expand...
Shapers are set to limit certain activities. Speedtest is part of HTTP (browsing), so it will always show best speeds.

On some ISP's, if you try and download something from Rapidshare, you will see how the shaper turns speeds into mush, particularly during the day. Rapidshare is HTTP, but Mweb classes it as unwanted activity. Same with games and torrents. It's becoming quite rare to grab a torrent and see it download at full speed until quite late at night.

Telkom doesn't shape so much and it's quite consistent, which is probably why you're not seeing a big difference.

What you would probably enjoy is a connection with some guaranteed redundancy.
 
killadoob said:
I somehow doubt his trading program makes use of rapidshare haha :D
Click to expand...

It was an example of how they can shape an individual website or prioritise another at will.

If you're trading from 6000miles away then maybe latency is an issue. Linespeed becomes more important then, even if it isn't too shaped. Contention (more users on uncapped) will also be a factor here.
 
@psudan: I'm not entirely sure how you connect to your online trading program, either you're using software or a web browser. Regardless, it is highly possible that the former will use HTTP to update all your indicators anyway, and I highly doubt your trading program would have generated enough traffic to be be placed on the shaping list. As Tanya35 points out, that list normally has things like rapidshare and steam games, basically sites that contain rich bandwidth media or applications. Unless you're downloading literally hundreds of images each minute, I can think of few ways to display financial indicators (processed from raw indicator data) that would demand this kind of bandwidth so I reckon you'd be safe getting a shaped option. Give it a bash, you can always change back seamlessly if you use the same provider.
 
Thanks to all for your reply, I have now cancel my R2K MWeb for the end of next month. I might try to the new OpenWeb Lite Uncapped/Unshapped for R495. My usage is only 35Gb/month!
 
Forget unshaped. You're physically far away from the server. You're latency is going to suck either way. Unshaped is going to suck less, but the difference will be minor & not worth it. If you're not getting slaughtered on the market @ 300ms then you're probably not going to be at 100ms more. Unless of course your trading app relies on automated trading.

35GB for trading data. You've got to be joking. Is the trading data in High Def at least? /s

More importantly than all of the above: Get backup cap. You should not be relying on one ISP if your using the cap to trade. And if you can shell out 2k pm then you should def grab like 5gb of prepaid backup cap with an ISP that relies on a different undersea cable than your main ISP. This is extra important if your going for an uncapped one. If you go with Openweb then I'd suggest either WebAfrica or Telkom cap as backup.

Tanya35 said:
If you're trading from 6000miles away then maybe latency is an issue. Linespeed becomes more important then, even if it isn't too shaped. Contention (more users on uncapped) will also be a factor here.
Click to expand...
No. There is a latency advantage to 4mbps, but its barely measurable.
 
The datafeed as such is fairly small, it is not in HD (LOL)... The bulk of the 35Gb is for a Citrix connection to a trading room in the US. Yep latency is the issue, my datafeed comes for the US Norfolk on average 500ms, but my broker is in the UK and I only use LIMIT orders so not too bad.
 
Similar situation. But to avoid all the ups and downs of dsl, I use ISDN 128k with infinicall. Stable connection, runs all night and weekends, transferring data (Singapore, New York). 25gb per month at around R1200. At this point I can't afford to risk down time, shaping, isp nonsense.
 
Last edited:
psudan said:
Thanks to all for your reply, I have now cancel my R2K MWeb for the end of next month. I might try to the new OpenWeb Lite Uncapped/Unshapped for R495. My usage is only 35Gb/month!
Click to expand...

The openweb lite is based on IS bandwidth, Really BAD idea. Take Openweb GOLD.
 
I would not go with openweb lite as qwik points out it is IS. Stay away!!!!!!! Pay extra for openweb gold or mweb rather.
 
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