IB and work

I cant seem to log into the browser based system at work. the window says java could not load. any suggestions?

 

It's probably the firewall. The browser-based interface to IB seems to use port(s) other than 80 (haven't checked which one(s) specifically). Your network may be configured not to admit traffic on these ports. Check with your network admin.

 

download java onto your work computer. IB has directions on the site.

however, you might not be able to get through the firewall your company has in place.

 

Suggest you do a search on IB discussion board.
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.pl?pg=topics

i.e.

http://www.interactivebrokers.com/discus/messages/153/460.html

 

And after figuring out how to bypass your firewall, consider whether the price you'll pay if caught is sufficient to continue using IB versus a broker you can access from Internet Explorer.

 

if they're even remotely on the ball, they'll catch you hitting brokers through explorer just about as easily.

 

i use gotomypc.com from work, dont know if that's trackable, but it does the job for me.

 

riggs, just a simple rule of thumb - EVERYTHING is trackable. The question is just how easy to track. All they would have to do is track or block access to gotomypc.com or whatever server IPs that are used by their system, which is trivial to find out.

 

Why IB makes all so complicated ? Some security consideratrions or it's the incentive to select either job or trading ?

 

The problem is with the implementation itself: Often the software of these companies requires the ability to randomly obtain a port number on which to either communicate or receive data over a particular block of port numbers.

These are very poor requirements: In a corporate network it would require - somewhere on either a router, firewall or both - a block of open ports with no security handshake. This is a BIG problem for network security.

A simple solution would be for the software to asssign SPECIFIC ports for use by a SPECIFIC account: believe me this is not hard to implement even in a very high volume scenario.

Most likely these companies have no talent - or budget to hire talent - to accomplish these improvements, and in an attempt to further cut costs and achieve margins they are unwilling to put any investments into their systems. As a result they lose customers - of course these dont appear directly on any financial statement and thus nobody on their boards objects.