IBKR Lite Lags...

Discussion in 'Trading Software' started by bigmoose, Mar 16, 2022.

  1. Folks just starting to get back after a long illness. I had them change my IB account over to Lite during recovery. I started playing with it today and the lags during trading hours are krazy. 4 or 5 seconds to manipulate any feature on the charts.

    Since I've been away so long is this the normal behaviour or Lite, as in being throttled, or has a problem crept in on my end?

    Outside of NYSE trading hours it is as fast as I remember on the paid plans.
     
  2. You get what you pay for...
     
  3. maxinger

    maxinger

    even if you subscribe to the paid charting s/w, you will also face the lag problem
    when there is heavy traffic.
     
    bigmoose likes this.
  4. This is the feature that shook me out of IB long time ago. They have everything great except when it matters their software would throw up lags and with large positions it cost me so many times
     
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  5. Thanks, I have no problem going back to paid plans. Just working on getting back into the groove after more than a year away... Trying to discern if this is a IBRKRLITE problem, or a IB problem, or something choking on my end of the equation.

    Maxinger how bad are the lags that you are seeing? Less than a second, or 4 or 5 seconds?
     
  6. maxinger

    maxinger

    I use Esignal.
    during the European session,
    the lag could be in terms of minutes (due to the Ukraine war thing).
    anything > 0.5 sec is totally not acceptable for day trading.
    lately, it is ok.

    I have experienced a lag of as much as 20 to 30 minutes during the early US session when there were very major / violent US related news/events.
    such a thing is not so common but it could be very frustrating when it happened.

    I think it got to do with the
    UDP Protocol (very fast!! super amazing!!!)
    TCP Protocol (very slow!!! antique technology?!?! the software engineers ought to be shot !!! )
    thing but I haven't explored further.
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2022
    bigmoose likes this.
  7. I wanted to update this in case anyone else was having the problem. I opened a support ticket and here is some advice:
    My memory allocation was low, around 700. Changing it to 2048 did not fix the lag.

    Changing from "latest" build to "stable" build DID fix the lag problem. Everything back to normal! Horray!
     
  8. maxinger

    maxinger

    well. lately, the traffic is not very hot ;
    My charting software is working fine because the traffic is not heavy.


    monitor your IB thing when the traffic is very hot and see if there is any improvement.

    based on my past few decades of experience, there is no solution unless you
    pay for a trading desk in a trading house, specialized high-speed trading platform ...
    and it will cost > $1.5 k / mth.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2022
    bigmoose likes this.