...no offense intended. I was thinking about route tracing, changing ISP's, changing connection methods (dialup, DSL, cable). Back when I was using NexTrend for data, the help desk ladies there could trace how I was connected to them and identify the source of the problem, whether it was their ISP or server, or more often than not, a critical node in the internet which was down, sluggish, or dropping packets. If IB hooks us up always to the same server based on where we are geographically, then comm difficulties like that could be the problem, not necessarily IB itself.
My experience: My account is hosted on gw1. I know that gw5 had some sort of hardware problem a couple of weeks back that appears to be resolved now. I monitor #interactivebrokers chat room on othernet whenever I am trading. If there is a genuine IB wide problem, this room can be difficult to read because of the rate of posts. This is EXTREMELY rare. I can only recall 2 occasions over the past 3 years that all accounts on all servers failed. The software I use to trade uses the IB api. Since there is no notification from the API when a disconnect is detected (pink grid), my software tries to recognize "IB problems" by detecting 15 seconds without any change to the bid/ask/last of front month ES. Since the start of November, these are the disconnects I have logged: Nov 9, 2003 11:06:39 AM Nov 9, 2003 11:52:50 AM Nov 9, 2003 2:32:42 PM Nov 9, 2003 3:13:43 PM Nov 10, 2003 10:43:07 AM Nov 11, 2003 11:08:25 AM Nov 11, 2003 11:48:28 AM Nov 12, 2003 3:17:56 PM Nov 13, 2003 2:12:00 PM Nov 17, 2003 12:26:25 PM Nov 18, 2003 2:27:01 PM Nov 19, 2003 10:59:58 AM Nov 19, 2003 1:40:09 PM Nov 20, 2003 9:57:45 AM Nov 20, 2003 10:17:43 AM Nov 20, 2003 10:44:22 AM Nov 20, 2003 10:54:35 AM Nov 20, 2003 1:06:41 PM Nov 21, 2003 10:58:23 AM Nov 21, 2003 1:44:18 PM Nov 24, 2003 11:44:12 AM Nov 24, 2003 12:10:55 PM Nov 24, 2003 1:32:56 PM Nov 25, 2003 1:23:33 PM Nov 26, 2003 2:43:16 PM Nov 26, 2003 2:46:42 PM Nov 28, 2003 1:12:42 PM Dec 1, 2003 10:38:50 AM Dec 1, 2003 1:49:04 PM Dec 2, 2003 3:02:07 PM Dec 3, 2003 11:20:21 AM Dec 3, 2003 11:56:04 AM Dec 4, 2003 2:01:17 PM Dec 5, 2003 2:48:38 PM Not all of these are IB problems. I would estimate that 80% of these momentary disconnects are related to my ISP. And TWS reconnected EVERY SINGLE TIME without any manual intervention or needing to restart or reboot. I'd be very curious to see how many of your problems happened at the same time as mine. IB is the greatest broker I have ever used.
...I experienced seven relogins from 10/27 to 11/7, but only wrote down two of the times: 11/3 9:20 AM EST 11/4 8:55 AM EST all before the times you noted. No probs since.