Ok, I am so frustrated. Any help will be greatly appreciated. I am using Scottrade's Java based Scottrader streaming quotes on a 700mhz G4 Apple eMac with 1gig memory, 100mgh Bus, and the latest OS X Tiger. I am on a fast DSL connection going through a Netgear router. I even paid extra for the faster DSL connection. This is the problem. The charts will start lagging behind several seconds after launching the Scottrader Java charts, and then after about 2 minutes it will be about a minute behind and then it will eventually be 4 minutes behind. Sometimes after an extended period of lagging behind all of a sudden they will all update at once and then start lagging behind again. Sometiimes the charts will freeze and stop completely or Safari or Firefox (I have tried both) will crash and I will have to log back in. The only way to keep the charts somewhat up to date is to keep changing the socket connection back and forth between the two choices in the connection settings and reconnecting. I would have to keep clicking those to options back and forth every few seconds and reconnecting to get anything close to updated charts and quotes! This is insane! I have opened port 443 (recommended by scottrade) on the Netgear router for UDP/TCP connections and also port 80 for HTTP connections. I have the same problems whether the ports are opened or not. If I dont reconnect by changing the socket connection it will just keep showing all the ticks in slow motion - so for instance I can watch the last few minutes of trading in slow motion after the closing bell rings if I don't reconnect. So much for real time charts! Scottrade says my computer is fast enough and they keep telling me that I must have a connection issue from being behind a firewall. I have opened the ports required and even tried opening all the ports by designating my computer as a default DMZ server under the routers WAN setup settings......no change. I have downloaded the latest version of Java for the Mac........JRE 1.5. Are there some Java settings I must change? Why cant the charts keep up with real time quotes? Does anyone have any ideas of what might be the problem or anything I could try to fix it? I really want to change brokers, but now is a bad time.........
Running the latest Mac OS on a 700MHz G4 is the problem. I've been running Macs my whole life and now have an Intel iMac with 2GB RAM and run my charting natively and my execution via Parallels. What it boils down to is you really should get a new computer. iMacs are pretty cheap. My 20inch cost me 1500 bucks and extra RAM was like 130. I would just about guarantee that to be your issue. The G4 700MHz would be good for running minimal things, but trying to keep up with real time quotes is not something that machine can handle. The efficiencies aren't there.