I don't have "slowdowns and burps", and neither do most people. What I would wonder is what you and the original poster have in common. OldTrader
Just some advice in case anyone runs into the same problem I did. When I bought my new Dell Workstation, I got a wireless card for it. I noticed that when playing games or trading stocks near opening, that it lags once in a while and has packet loss. I got a long ethernet cable and plugged it directly to the router and it was fine. My conclusion was that USB wireless for desktops are inferior to the ones that are built into laptops. There may be lag or delay which could be caused by using wireless. It's always better to use a ethernet cable whenever possible. Using encrytion over wireless also slows the transmission of data. Good Luck!
I count 9 times up until this point where the API has passed on the logging message - "Market data farm connection is broken:usfarm" Sometimes this reads ":usfuture" I haven't been able to actively monitor the market today, so I can't comment on any slowdowns or pauses. It's a rare day when I DON'T get these messages. While it certainly could be my ISP, that message reads to me like there is a disconnect between IB's data collection servers and their client distribution servers. Of course, since I don't know anything about their farm setup, that's just an intelligent speculation on my part. (edit to above post) My setup is computer via ethernet to switch, switch via ethernet to DSL modem.
You can check if there if packet loss between you and the server. Start a Dos Prompt Window Type "ping xxx -t" xxx = name or IP of IB Server you connect to. It will keep pinging it non-stop and you can see if any packets are lost. If packets are lost, you can check where they are being lost using the tracert command. Type "tracert xxx" a few times. Good Luck!