Hi Steve, This is a very important observation. It is not difficult it seems to gather a bunch of statistics from many people certifying that up-time is 99.9+percent. Such figures are perfectly meaningless if not tied to the backup procedure. Here you have to distinguish between the guy glued to his screen (if not asleep) and keying in an order once in a while and the user trying to automate his trading environment. For the first, overall satisfaction could be great, for the second it could be a nightmare. Be good, nononsense
Nononsense: I understand your comment. I agree in principle, however I believe that it is the trader's responsibility to decide whether a broker's products and services are suitable. In this case, I wanted to know if there were other traders who were experiencing problems with service drop-offs. Although it has not been a full 2 days, the results to this point indicate that fifteen (15) respondents were satisfied with IB's service. They voted in the top category saying that IB's service (HK server) was "good with few interruptions". Two (2) voters found IB's service "acceptable" but with "periodic" interruptions. We did not specify the number of interruptions, but implicit in this option, we suggest that any person of common intelligence would understand this to be more than "a few" Four (4) voters found IB's service "Difficult to rely on", and in their experience "interruptions were common". Until recently we fit in this category (we did not vote in the survey). We experienced so many interruptions in one 30 day period, that we stopped trading for a period of several months while investigating alternatives. Three (3) voters found IB's service "unacceptable", experiencing interruptions on a "regular" basis. We assume "regular" means frequently, on a daily or weekly basis. Based on simply common sense, we suggest that the survey has insufficient responses on which to make a judgement. One wonders if the survey simply went under the radar of HK traders, or if they are simply apathetic (or masochistic). Too bad really. Like most things in life, if more folks were willing to get involved, they might get more of what (they say) they want. As mentioned in my initial comments, I am obligated to apologize (and I do so here). Apparently the majority of voters are relatively happy with the service. Personally, if I were a service provider I would not be pleased with this result. Anytime half of the respondents express reservations, you have to wonder what they are talking about (assuming you give a damn). Take Care Steve
I would have thought that a 40% disatisfaction rate would indicate that this requires urgent attention. Today I have a trouble free day because I am connected via a 56K dial up. Joesan I believe also solved the problem by switching from Broadband to dial up. Using dialup is not ideal and I have lost market depth etc when using 56K. It would seem that TWS is sensitive to the stunts that Broadband ISP's pull to reduce their bandwidth usage, whether they are in Singapore, Shanghai or Bangkok or US or EU. I would have thought that this would be something to investigate bearing in mind the number of ISP's that pull these stunts and the fact that an alternative is not always readily available. Sadly, I think it is more likely that they will take the stance that this just confirms that the problem is with ISP's not TWS, (after all everything is just fine in the cleanroom environment of their server). The number of people posting on this board that they are dropping a certain data vendor should serve as a warning as to where this attitude eventually leads.
more telling is that we currently have thousands of people each day logging into the HK server who are actively trading. If there was a systemic problem with the connection, we'd have to believe that people would be complaining. mokwit, now that you are using dialup and having a trouble free day, I think this points out that the problem is your ISP as opposed to IB's infrastructure. Is it possible for you to contact your ISP, find out where the problems lie and even consider placing a direct line into them? We've found that contacting ISP's has been helpful. alternatively you can place a direct line into our HK office (an expensive solution but a valid one for those trading full time).
I just lost market depth around 14:4X HK time on 56k. Your comment just proves my point in the above post. With that attitude I suggest IB don't invest in serving customers beyond HK, SG, JP and KR. e.g. forget about serving the mainland China market for example. As for Thailand, there are a lot of expats here and some are trading. I had a web convo with a volume Dax trader who I believe traded through IB and gave up and went home because of the same issue I am having. You don't get it that because someone has given up complaining it doesn't mean the problem is solved. Still, you are right and the customer is wrong (as always).................
def, A big part of the problem is caused because a crude way of throttling traffic (and tcp/ip is crude) is to chuck packets away. Now this doesnt cause a "real problem" because tcp/ip end points just retransmit and "do the right thing" by transmitting less packets. The problem in a "poor" network is that IB is measuring (I presume) some statistic of packet loss or delay variability and deciding that the network connection is "dead" and dropping it. It would be better to have a "third world" option where the metric was much more forgiving. Mokwit really is right about that. IMHO (of course). Mokwit, Given that this is the problem is it possible to talk to a number of your ISPs and see if either they have better performance than the others or can provide you some sort of QoS guaranteed channels. The technology is capable of it but I doubt that the customer service people are ready. Your best bet is to find someone who says they will provide good service. Perhaps a multinational like equant who run a business network into Bankok could provide either a broadband or isdn dialup service that was ok. They or ATT would be worth a try.
Kiwi, you are right. I am not an expert on TCP/IP, Frame relay/ATM etc but I understand that amongst other stunts they que the packets and let a log jam build up rather than exceed a bandwidth threshold when demand exceeds supply. Many thanks for your suggestions. Unfortunately I have explored these options and laughably the best option is 56k dialup through a company whose Broadband offering is I believe also problematic. If I were to hook up a leased line at astronomical expense I would still have similar issues. I know because I worked at companies who paid for leased lines that went down at a frequency that would not be tolerated in eg London. FYI the infrastructure in Thailand is high quality and fairly recent, the issue is technical competence and placing profit before customer service which is devastating when a company is very inneficient and has a lot of inefficiency to make up for. I can give you more detail on the problem from both the technical and regulatory angles if you want but i guess it is not really of that much interest to you.
mokwit, you are incorrect about my attitude and thinking we don't care. I just keep stating that very rarely do we receive complaints about our connectivity and while I do sympathize with you, I do not think relaxing our protocols to meet the poor quality that some ISP's provide in the third world is the way to go. I should also state that I am not an expert on tcp/ip and have gone under the assumption that if there is packet loss, there is a chance that data is not making it through (ie. a missed fill, missed order transmission etc). In any event, I'll bring up your comments to our head of operations who understands network infrastructure and designed our protocols. At a minimum I'll learn a bit more but given that money is involved with the nature of the data being transmitted, I suspect that we will not relax our standards.
Def, As stated before, if it was JUST me in Thailand who was having this problem I would have to accept that there has to be a cutofff somewhere. My point is that it is NOT just me in Thailand, I have seen reports of identical connectivity problems from people in EU and US which are not (yet) third world countries. I am making my point about TWS being too sensitive based on the fact that people in EU and US are ALSO reporting problems.