I live in Australia, and login to a US based trading company software for work. Generally my connection to this software is good with maybe 1-2 dropouts every 1-2 days (in a 5-6 hour period). When this occurs I usually just need to log back in and everything is fine after that, however a couple of times a month I will experience several hours where I either:
- Can login, but then data on the software is not updating properly (with the software sometimes displaying a "connecting" error), and so then I can't use the software.
- Or I login, but then soon after have a connection problem and get logged out.
These periods are extremely dangerous because if there is a market move against me and I can't trade, I can't make any adjustments to my trades and I'm flying blind. An occasional logout, but then being able to log back in in a couple of minutes is no problem.
It seems like in good times and bad my internet connection speeds (wired LAN), and ping/tracert results are pretty similar.
- My internet connection speed is around 47MBps download speed.
- I have attached ping/tracert example results during a bad connection period.
Optus ISP ping/tracert results:
The trading company says it is the lag in Singapore through my Optus ISP that is causing the problem, and that I should see if the ISP can optimize my routing to login.silexx.com. Unfortunately my ISP is not proving very helpful with this. Someone also mentioned to me that due to the distance of the jump, the lag is expected/normal.
I have also tried logging in through a VPN (just to have a different routing path). This seems to yield similar ping/tracert time results, and when I was having serious connection problems yesterday - using the VPN wasn't resolving the issue.
VPN tracert/ping results:
My questions are:
- How do I check that the lag/internet routing is the actual problem - and not just an excuse used by the software company?
- If the ISP won't/can't optimize my route is there a way of doing so myself?
- Is there any point trying a different VPN?
- Is there any point having a backup mobile internet connection with a different provider, but how do I know which provider's routing might be successful/how do I know this will resolve the problem?
- Are there any other solutions that I haven't thought of?