I have lately been encountering a problem getting real time data from my brokerage firm(quotes sometimes get disconnected). Restarting the program, PC, or disconnecting/reconnecting modem do not solve the problem. I have a DSL connection, and do not use a router. In pinging five of the servers they've given me the IP addresses to, three of them result repeatedly in 100% packet loss, and the other two are 100% successful. When they switch me over to one of the two servers that ping successfully, everything works fine. Of course, when I open the site, I may get a server that works or one that doesn't. They are a little baffled by this, so I thought I would see what some of you might think. My questions are: 1) Is this likely a problem with the brokerage firm or with my DSL provider? 2) Is there a way for me to connect to one of the "good" servers specifcally(i.e., open a specific IP address rather than the web site address)? 3) If the the anwer to question 2 is yes, is there a way to set that IP address as the default address for that web site? Thanks. Alan
The problem could be anywhere.between you and your broker. Routers and server farm directors that do load sharing often look at your IP address and divide it by 2, 3, 4, etc to choose which link to use, and sometimes the link or server it chooses is dead. Use the traceroute (or tracert) command for each of the broker's servers' IP addresses to see a list of all the routers between you and the server. Some of the traces will stop prematurely; that will indicate which router has problems. Your broker should be able.to tell you how to configure the software you run to use specific servers. If you connect to the broker using a web browser, just use IP addresses instead of host names in the URL, and bookmark the pages once they've loaded. If you really need to, there is a file named windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts that can control the host name to IP address mapping. With care, you can edit it.