Four facility codes decide more about your trading execution quality than almost anything else in your setup: NY4, LD4, TY3, HK1. They show up in broker disclosures, VPS provider marketing, and latency benchmark posts across the industry, usually without explanation. This is the reference guide to what they actually are, why forex and futures infrastructure clusters inside them specifically, and how to use that information to pick the right VPS location for your broker.
What Equinix Actually Is
Equinix is a global colocation company — it builds and operates data center campuses, then rents rack space and cross-connects to other companies who need to be physically close to each other’s infrastructure. It does not trade, broker, or provide liquidity itself. What it provides is proximity: a building where a broker’s matching engine, a liquidity provider’s pricing feed, and a trader’s VPS can all sit within the same physical facility, connected by direct fiber instead of the public internet.
That proximity is the entire reason these facility codes matter. Financial firms colocate at Equinix campuses specifically because being in the same building as your counterparties turns a network trip that would otherwise cross a city, a country, or an ocean into a cable run of a few hundred meters.
📊 Key Stat: A network path confined to a single Equinix campus typically adds 1-5ms of round-trip latency. The same logical connection routed over the public internet between two facilities in the same city can add 10-30ms or more, and between facilities on different continents, 100ms or more.
NY4 — Secaucus, New Jersey
NY4 is arguably the single most important facility in global forex and derivatives infrastructure. Located in Secaucus, New Jersey, it houses trading infrastructure for a large share of US-facing forex brokers, numerous liquidity providers and prime brokers, and firms trading US equities and futures markets. When a broker or VPS provider says “New York server,” NY4 (or its sister facilities in the same metro cluster) is almost always what they mean.
NY4 is also the relevant reference point for traders whose actual target is Chicago futures infrastructure but who trade forex or other instruments alongside it — see our Why Chicago Matters for Futures Traders guide for the distinct Chicago-area campus (350 East Cermak Road) that matters specifically for CME-listed futures.
LD4 (and LD5) — Slough, England
LD4 is the European equivalent of NY4, located in Slough, roughly 20 miles west of central London near Heathrow. It hosts matching engines and trade servers for the majority of UK- and Europe-regulated retail forex brokers, along with major liquidity providers serving the European session. LD5, its sister facility on the same campus, hosts a substantial share of the same category of infrastructure, cross-connected to LD4 by dedicated fiber.
💡 Tip: For a full breakdown of why “London” in broker and VPS marketing almost never means inside the M25, see our dedicated guide: VPS Latency Explained: What a “London Server” Actually Means.
TY3 — Tokyo
TY3 is the primary hub for Asia-Pacific forex infrastructure, hosting brokers and liquidity providers serving the Tokyo trading session — the highest-volume session for JPY pairs and a significant overlap window with both the Sydney and (at the end of the session) London hours. Traders whose strategies concentrate on JPY pairs or the Asian session specifically benefit most from colocation here, since round-trip latency from outside the region to TY3 is meaningfully higher than intra-region traffic.
HK1 — Hong Kong
HK1 serves a similar function to TY3 but for firms and brokers oriented toward Hong Kong, mainland China-adjacent flow, and broader Southeast Asian liquidity. Traders working with brokers whose Asia-Pacific infrastructure is anchored in Hong Kong rather than Tokyo should prioritize HK1 for the same colocation logic that applies everywhere else on this list.
How to Match a Facility to Your Broker
The practical exercise is straightforward once you understand what these codes represent:
- Find where your broker’s trade servers actually live. Check your broker’s own disclosures first. If unpublished, the safest assumption follows regulatory geography — a UK/Europe-regulated broker is most likely LD4/LD5; a US-facing broker is most likely NY4; an Asia-Pacific-focused broker is most likely TY3 or HK1 — but assumption is not verification.
- Verify with a traceroute once connected, rather than trusting the assumption alone. A VPS genuinely colocated in the correct facility shows 1-3 hops and low single-digit millisecond latency to your broker’s server address.
- Reassess if you switch brokers. A broker migration is a common reason traders end up on the wrong facility for months without noticing — see our guide to migrating an EA between brokers for the full checklist, including re-verifying VPS location.
⚠️ Warning: Regulatory jurisdiction is a reasonable first guess for facility location, but it is not a guarantee. Some brokers operate multiple regional entities with infrastructure split across facilities, or route certain account types differently than others. Always verify against your specific account’s actual server address.
Why You Can’t Just Pick the “Best” Facility Globally
There is no single best Equinix facility in the abstract — only the best one relative to where your specific broker’s infrastructure sits. A trader on a Tokyo-based broker gains nothing from NY4 colocation; in fact, routing from NY4 to Tokyo-based infrastructure crosses an ocean and adds well over 100ms, which is worse than a mediocre home connection to a genuinely local broker server.
📊 Key Stat: Cross-continental latency (e.g., a New York VPS reaching a Tokyo-hosted broker) commonly runs 150-180ms round-trip — worse than many home internet connections reaching a broker in the correct region. Facility choice only helps when it matches your broker’s actual location.
This is why the location question always has to start with “where does my broker actually execute,” not “which datacenter has the best reputation.”
Running Multi-Broker Setups Across Facilities
Traders running accounts with brokers in different regions face a genuine tradeoff: no single VPS location is optimal for both a London-hosted broker and a Tokyo-hosted broker simultaneously. The usual approaches are to run separate VPS instances in each relevant facility, or to accept a latency compromise on the secondary broker if it is used for less latency-sensitive strategies (swing trades rather than scalping, for example). Our multi-broker setups section covers this tradeoff in more depth.
Recommended FXVPS Plan and Locations
FXVPS operates dedicated servers physically inside all four of these facilities — London (LD4), New York (NY4), Tokyo (TY3), and Hong Kong (HK1) — plus 15+ locations in total. Plan sizing here follows your platform and strategy needs rather than location choice specifically:
Core Plan ($29/mo) — one platform instance in the facility matching your broker, sufficient for most single-account EA or manual trading setups.
Pro Plan ($39/mo) — running multiple platform instances or brokers hosted in the same facility, or a heavier resource profile (cTrader, multiple charts, several EAs).
Scaling Plan ($79/mo) — multi-broker, multi-facility setups where you are managing several accounts across different regions, or resource-intensive multi-instance configurations.
✅ Best Practice: Before committing to a plan, confirm your broker’s facility with a trial in your best-guess location and a traceroute test, using the verification method above — it takes minutes and removes the single biggest source of latency-related regret in VPS selection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a more expensive VPS in the “right” facility always better than a cheaper one in the wrong facility?
For EA traders, scalpers, and news traders, yes — the latency gap between correct and incorrect facility choice typically dwarfs the price difference between VPS tiers. For swing traders holding positions for days, the gap matters far less.
Can I be colocated with two different brokers in two different facilities at once?
Not with a single VPS instance. Running two geographically distant brokers optimally requires two VPS instances, one in each relevant facility, or accepting a latency tradeoff on whichever broker is secondary to your primary strategy.
How do I know if my broker uses NY4, LD4, TY3, or HK1?
Start with your broker’s own disclosures, then verify independently once connected using a traceroute to your account’s actual trade server address — regulatory jurisdiction is a reasonable first guess but not a substitute for verification.
Does FXVPS operate in all four of these facilities?
Yes — FXVPS runs dedicated servers inside LD4 (London), NY4 (New York), TY3 (Tokyo), and HK1 (Hong Kong), among 15+ total locations.
Related Reading
- VPS Latency Explained: What a “London Server” Actually Means — a deep dive on the LD4/LD5 campus specifically
- Why Chicago Matters for Futures Traders — the distinct Chicago-area campus relevant to CME futures
- Tips for Choosing the Best VPS Location for Trading — the broader decision framework, including multi-broker setups
- VPS vs Local PC: Real Latency Benchmarks — measured numbers showing what facility choice is worth in practice