What all do you have on this connection? As I said previously, when I was trying to recieve data for charting over the phone line I got knocked off all the time. When I switched to satellite for data and just used the phone line for TWS the problem went away.
I've been through that before. After I had nearly developed a first name basis with MSN tech support, I took the computer in to have the modem checked. It was fine, and connected to my ISP from the computer shop with no problem. I am convinced it was the phone lines in my area, but I could never prove it. Not to mention my phone company(Pac Bell, San Diego) could not have cared less anyway. I don't mean to bash dial-up, but I never had one that worked consistently. The problems just seemed endless. I switched to cable as soon as I could. Cable is not perfect either, but it is a huge improvement from dial-up.
I don't think the problem is what I'm running, but that I have a hard time connecting at start-up. When I get connected, I run TWS and Quote Tracker. Your connection to satellite is interesting. That might be something I would like to try. I have heard that the transmittal is somewhat delayed; is that a problem for you? Thanks
I recently moved to a new temporary location and was forced to give up my cable modem and use my 56k modem as there are no broadband connections available here. When I first moved I was using CyberTrader Pro to trade with and also running eSignal RT with 200 symbols and also a couple of live mIRC trading rooms and a couple of browsers and much to my surprise, everything ran okay except for times when the trading volume really spiked like after Fed announcements, etc. And I was running this on a computer with Win 98 SE, a 500 mhz PIII, 384 mgs of DRAM and a 7200 RPM hard drive. But then I switched brokers and had to switch to RealTick which didn't like the driver for my video card. So I installed a new WD Caviar 120 gig Hard drive with an 8 mb buffer and installed Win XP Pro on it so I'd be able to use RealTick. Unfortunately this slowed everything down a lot and now with any volume at all I have data feed problems and get bandwidth limitation messages in RealTick. And the quotes in RealTick and/or eSignal are delayed. All in all a BIG DRAG! I've spent many hours trying to resolve this and tried to tweak Win XP but nothing's worked so far. I'm going to be forced to upgrade my motherboard and processor and eventually move so I can access a high speed connection. Just faking it in the meantime. What it is.
When using the 56K it was fine and plenty fast enough. The problem I had was always the ISP dropping me. I called and called and called and each tech person was more and more surly/incompetent. I could go months and not get dropped and then I'd get dropped 3-4 times in an HOUR some days. Nothing like putting on a trade and getting your connection dropped. Talk about giving a monkey your money. My worst loss was $500 in the 3 minutes it took me to get back on line. Of course there is the lost opportunity cost of trades I was too anxiety stricken to put on for fear of getting dropped. Anyway, ISP said they had no problem and it must be the phone lines. SBC came out and said the lines/wires had no problem/noise. Finally got DSL to the area about a year ago. No looking back, but it did take some time for me to trust that I wouldn't lose my connection.
might not be a bad idea to post an ISP feedback section on this web site...not just the name of the ISP, but also the locale... these topics come up all the time...
LUK When I first started trading broad band connections were quite expensive. Today, theres some great deals and I wouldnt even consider 56k. SBC/Yahoo are offering DSL connection for 30 bucks a month special. All these companies will tell you that their products will work on 56k. Its alot like getting on the highway with a spark plug lose. I used to use a program called Quicken.com for quotes. It was probably one of the smallest real time program to run and had problems with it using a 56k connection. Esignals one of the biggest. I suggest looking into a faster connection. STerling
Our cable company finally was able to roll out a cable to our trailer-park. The speed increase is amazing -- I average around 150 kilobytes a second on downloads. However, I don't really notice any difference in real-time quotes from a 57.6, unless I'm doing a lot of simultaneous surfing, downloading, etc ...
I sometimes wonder if it doesn't have a lot to do with the conditions of the local phone lines. I think mine were probably real bad. My data ran horribly on dial-up. Satelitte works much better for me. Yes sometimes, it goes out when it rains. But not always. I still have bellsouth for such times, when the satelitte is down. (not that often) Yes there is a slight lag in satelitte which makes the connection less than desirable for gaming - such as - tribes etc. But for my trading, satelitte works just fine. No dsl or cable available here.