Some of my trades were a little slow, but not as bad as the other day. My bigger problem was Quicken Quotes Live, they were running 4 minutes behind, but IB's quotes seemed right on. QQL blamed it on the volume. I don't know, but I couldn't trade off of the charts for a while.
I have been having a similar problem with JTWS the past several weeks. I had been exchanging emails with IB's support but they have not been much help. BACKGROUND: I am located on the west coast. I have a DSL account with Pacific Bell. I used VisualRoute to trace the packets from my machine to gw3.ibllc.com, IB's USA server. My machine is 11 hops away, traversing through pacbell's network then sprintlink to IB. My machine is a 850Mhz PIII, 256 MB, JTWS, Ravenquote, ZoneAlarmPro, IE. CPU averages 30-50%. PROBLEM: The problem I have been experiencing is that JTWS orders *and* quotes seem to freeze up very frequently for 5-10 seconds at a time. During a freeze, I am able to enter orders, but if I transmit they will be stuck in the BLUE state until the quotes unfreeze. During this time, RavenQuote (Qcharts) and my backup broker CyberX work fine with no problems.. My contract page has 35-40 stock symbols on it, all using BEST_ECN route except for QQQ and DIA which use BEST. It is very obvious when the quotes freeze because all the bid/ask/last prices stop updating and become stale compared to my quotes/L2 on my charting software. Yesterday, I tried creating a reduced contract page with just 5 stocks QQQ MSFT QCOM HGSI IMNX, but the problem was still happnening. However, I have not experienced orders being stuck for minutes like some people have mentioned. Usually the freezes last 5-10 seconds, although it may freeze 2-3 times a minute. My own theory is that the JTWS does not robustly handle delays/dropped packets, and if there is a burp in the quote feed, it also freezes the order transmission/status messages. Another similar theory is that IB's quote servers are becoming overloaded, which causes similar burps in the quote feed, which also halts order transmission/status messages. I believe that IB's JTWS has a design flaw because the quote feed/messaging should be independent of the order feed/messaging. If the quotes freeze, I should still be able be able to transmit and cancel orders. IB's engineers should look into this. IB's support has suggested I purchase a dedicated network connection which should eliminate the problem. However, they haven't confirmed to me that the problem is solely a network related problem. NOTE: I highly recommend the VisualRoute program for running graphical traceroutes. You can get a 30-day trial at www.visualroute.com. Enter gw3.ibllc.com for IB's server.
I also have been using CyberX without any problems the past couple weeks while IB has been freezing on me. I think their system architecture may be better than IB because they have separte quote servers and trader servers. (In CyberX if you click on MENU you can get the IP addresses for both the trader server and quote server you are using. In my case I am using trade server 63.82.160.101 and quote server 63.82.162.215 ) IB JTWS appears to communicating with only one server IP gw3.ibllc.com [208.245.107.5]
Cost of an instantly filled round trip on RT3/Cyber/Watcher/ .......about $30 bucks. Cost of a delayed POS fill on IB that you might not know you even got for 30 seconds or more ....about 20 bucks. Cost to see the horrified look on the idiot who just realized he was filled and taking a point heat on the trade using IB and still doesn't recognize its true cost of trading.........priceless!
My IB executions were fine today and yesterday. I have been at IB 4 months and have had only one day where the executions were slow. Pretty impressive. Even on that one day, there was a 'fresh' virus clogging up the internet which may have been the cause. I haven't noticed the 'freeze up' refered to by others. IMO, IB rocks. Apparently many knowledgeable traders on this site agree. If someone else if happy with another platform, by all means stay there!
You may be right, unfortunately. This morning I was fortunate to buy an airline stock about 5 seconds before the announcement of a bailout, as I tried to sell it about 2 points higher I was not able to even place the order for about 30 sec. My 2 point profit turned to 1 point profit instead by the time my order went live. shneed
roger2: shneed states that he is using IB Best. I'm wondering which routing you are having your success with. Maybe there are some clues here. BSAM