For about $100 you can pull off a dual-WAN home or small office network that rivals most hedge funds, prop trading firms and most certainly much better than any normal home/home office or retail office space. You’ll also be able to have a bit of redundancy as well as much increased security options.
Be patient with eBay – If you lurk and have the time you can certainly beat the $100 price but if you pull the trigger this can easily turn into a $200-$300 endeavor… and at $300 I could recommend an Enterprise alternative that will rival any ultra-low-latency HFT setup on the street.
Go to eBay and buy: (or PM me)
Dell PowerConnect 2708 (or 2716 for more $) Gigabit Switch: $30 +/- $15
Linksys RV082 or RV016 (more $) 10/100 Dual-WAN VPN Router $50 +/- $15
Wireless Router from your ISP (Free) OR Linksys WRT54G Wireless Router (or WRT310N/610N for more $) $5 +/- $10
Most home, retail or rural small-business internet service providers have a setup that includes a cable modem or a cable modem/router combination. If you have a modem only from your ISP you can attach any router you choose. If you have a modem/router combo that connects via coaxial cable (cable vs. cat5) you will need to ask your ISP to put your modem/router into “bridge mode” which essentially makes it act as a modem only or gives you a 1:1 NAT to your router.
Setup as follows:
Linksys RV042 >> LAN#1 = Dell 2708, LAN#2 = Linksys WRT54G or ISP provided WiFi router (disable any ports on RV042 that are not in use – VERY IMPORTANT TO DISABLE)
Several prop firms and NYSE market maker firms are running their day-to-day operations (risk, compliance, off-floor trading, prop traders, etc.) on a Linksys/Cisco RV082 dual-wan router + Dell PowerConnect 2716 or 2724 Managed Gigabit Switch + Linksys/Cisco WRT54G2 or WRT310N wireless. If this is good enough for them it’s good enough for you to slightly scale down (to 4-port router and 8-port switch vs. 8-port router and 16/24/48 port switch) and implement on your own.
It is VERY IMPORTANT that you have LAN network traffic on a robust gigabit switch and that you have your wireless infrastructure separate from your LAN infrastructure. Most small business hardware and home/retail hardware is not robust enough (not fast enough CPU or onboard memory) to be able to handle a decent wireless + wired network. LAN traffic belongs on a switch, WAN traffic belongs on a router and wireless traffic belongs on a separate DHCP table (so the easiest solution is a $5-$20 separate router/firewall). Routers are built to route traffic – if routers were good switches we would buy 48-port routers and there would be no switches.
The whole key to this system is to decrease the loads on your router, allowing it to run at 100% without being overloaded/over stressed. If you force a home router to switch and route you will max it out. If you use a wired-only router to route-only and allow a separate wireless router and switch to handle the LAN traffic you allow your WAN interface to give you the best, lowest latency performance. I’m going to follow up with a few more posts on bandwidth, configurations, latency, etc. but this is how many LMM/DMM firms and prop shops setup their infrastructure and now that the prices are down to dirt-cheap I wanted to share.
Notes/Cautions/Warnings:
I would highly recommend that you install dd-wrt on the wireless routers I recommended.
You MUST upgrade your firmware to the latest release on all the Linksys/Cisco and Dell routers and switches. If not you may experience bugs, glitches, etc.
Also I do this (part-time) for a living – I am happy to recommend, configure, suggest, purchase-configure and resale to you any of the above but I’m not a blood-sucker so just post a reply with questions and I’ll try to walk you through any configuration issues you have. For less than $150 the general trading public should be able to have a home office network equal to the “best-of-the-best” prop firms and hedge funds as of 12-18 months ago. I’m happy to recommend software/hardware but if you can’t configure it please don’t expect me to do it for you.
