Use a VPS in Chicago. Check here for @sam028's Speedy Trading Servers as one such option:

speedytradingservers.com review Greeting Fellow Traders; I wanted to provide a quick post regarding some great service. So to prequalify my position, I have no financial interest in the following business nor do I benefit from this posting in any way, only wanted to share with others …

Mike

If you just want to log into your trading computer remotely, you can use TeamViewer - Free Remote Control, Remote Access & Online Meetings. It's free to use for one computer.

One thing you should consider is to have your system generate some kind of signal or "heartbeat" in the form of an email every hour (or some interval) to confirm that it's still up and running, even when you don't have a chance to log into your system. You could even have the heartbeat email include information on how much trading has been done that day, what open positions you have, what your daily p/l is so far, etc. This will allow you to easily check the status of the system when you're on the road, etc.

Two more things to consider:

1) To me, the biggest bogeyman associated with automated trading is the risk that you have a trade on and no stop protecting it. I don't know how your strategy is constructed but you should try to make it so that whenever a new trade is entered, a stop is immediately placed in the market.

I don't use TradeStation for my automated trading; instead, I wrote my own platform that interfaces with the CTS trading front-end. What I end up doing is wrapping my entry orders with pre-defined stops and targets, which are then passed as a package to the broker (and onto the exchange). As a result, if my computer gets hit by lightening, it doesn't matter because all of my orders are already off my machine and at the exchange. If one of my orders gets filled, a stop order and a target order are activated at the exchange. My machine going down could mean that I miss a new opportunity but I guess I value taking an unnecessary loss as more painful than missing out on a potential gain.

Your strategy may not allow you to do this kind of order bundling, but you should make sure that as soon as you get a fill, protective orders are placed. If it's possible for you to get filled after your computer has crashed, you need some kind of contingency plan for making sure that trade is protected with a stop-loss order.

2) When it comes to Windows Updates, do not let them be applied automatically - it's okay for them to be downloaded automatically but require Windows to get your approval before starting the update process. Otherwise, your computer may automatically shut down and restart once a Windows update is completed. That's a surprise you don't want to get!

Good luck!