Interesting stuff. They also have a "3G Failover" link that describes a system just for this kind of thing. I tried using my cell phone for my ATS connection (in tethered mode) and I found my cell phone network to be choppy with streaming tick data, like the speed was constantly being throttled up and down. So I have not trusted that as a backup but maybe other's have had better luck. It could be my location - not the greatest I suspect. Being notified is really a completely different subject. There are many ways things can fail, having the whole Internet connection flat-line is just one of them. The market data feed may break the the broker is still connected, the broker may break but the data keeps coming in, etc. Once I even had the bid and the ask prices streaming OK but just the last price was missing from the data stream. Every time a new problem happens I add to what I look for to "sound the alarm". Whatever is happening I like to be there, every situation is different. Be forewarned that sounding alarms does not endear you with other members of your household. The best alarm I found was an mp3 ringtone which sounds like an old fashion ringing phone. I can usually make it to the ATS by the third ring and it doesn't seem to disturb the rest of the house as much. My air-raid siren MP3 was a different story
If your PC is located in your home there are some free online aps that will ping your gateway every n seconds or milliseconds. You can set it to have an internal alarm (so then you will need sound on and speakers attached) so it'll wake you up if your connection goes down. Outside that there are plenty of 3rd party things out there and you could even invest in a very inexpensive Amazon Cloud instance (like xp or ubuntu running on one core with 1GB RAM and ping your GW and email from there. In terms of failover - most APIs and brokers don't handle hot-swap of IPs very well (meaning the new failover IP will force a logout or reauthentication). You'll need to be notified regardless and the 3G option is pretty slow and brutal so I'd skip that. I'm going to start offering a service for traders similar to Amazon Cloud instances (pay-per-use/day/hour, etc.) remote desktop instances based out of NYC. Trust is a big thing with something like this (trusting me not to look at your stuff, etc.) but I don't have the capacity to get very big so I'm not that worried - most of the people who are going to do this I know very well so its not an issue. If it is something you would be interested in exploring as another solution or alternative to colo (essentially you'd be in my colo on my hardware vs. you paying 100% on your own) shoot me a PM. Outside that do you know any languages or can you write scripts? Does your broker allow for a scripted login? Why not just write a ping program to log you back in on its own when the connection comes back up. Are you also worried about live positions or getting flat when the ISP cuts out?
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=179553&perpage=6&pagenumber=2 see Wallace, DeeDeeTwo posts
As a couple other posters suggested, you should consider a colocation or managed hosting arrangement where your automated trading software is running at a commercial-quality data center. They will offer more reliable internet connectivity than you can cobble together yourself at home with multiple carriers. Additionally, the data center will provide you with continuous power and other services needed to maintain high availability.
Having your system running on a remote computer where you have to connect to see what is going on has it's disadvantages too. One time I my broker lost contact with the exchange and there were several positions whose status were unknown because my system had attempted to close the positions and received no confirmation back. The broker was not sure if the orders got through or if their computers would attempt to complete it once the connection to the exchange was restored. That's when I realized the extent of the risk. There is not just my connection to the broker, there is also the brokers connection to the exchange, and possibly many more server-to-server connections I'm not even aware of. My computer was safely shut down and out of the picture during all of this, but had this trunk of the Internet gone out with my computer out there somewhere doing who-knows-what where I can't reach it the problem would have been compounded, to say the least. It is a little more work being your own "IT guy" and deal with power backups, redundancy, etc. but having the computer here by my side makes the extra work worthwhile. It's not for everyone but that's just my preference.
have coloed for 13-15 years since 98 for other mission critical purposes ( each minute down =$$$) , never ran into ur problem
I wonder if any of the commonly used brokers with API's can work with a failover? Maybe pre-registering one's Static IP address so their server knows to trust it or something like that would be doable..
I pay $150 a month for a screaming server. I7 core...8gb ram, etc etc. well worth it to not lose internet connection. Way too many times have I lost $1k on a 10 minute internet disruption. Server is the only way to go!!!