You can use whatever trading platform by using tunneling program. Basically you need to set up a tunneling program at a server using port 80 such as Open SSH and run a SSH client on your desktop within the firewall that accepts traffics from port 80 or whatever and tunnels the traffic to your SSH server. You then connect your trading app to localhost at the specified port, tada, your trading app. is happily working again. Of course, doing this may breach your employment contract and corporate security policy. So use it at your discretion.
homey, Any trading platform will work. I use LoopHole server www.loopholesoftware.com to scalp E-minis at work :eek:. The server part runs on your home computer and you run a client at work which tunnels out thru port 80, to your home computer and out to wherever you want. The simplest setup is to also use SocksCap (like ctrader says, and it's free) -- this will force any application (the trading platform, charts, etc.) to work through the http tunnel. The limiting factor is your upload speed -- I get about 25 kbps from my cable modem. --opm8
If you use http-tunnel.com you get about that speed with their free service. Then you don't have to worry about running the server on your end. If you need more bandwidth you can subscribe for $5 to their high speed service.
Actually, their free service sounds ridiculously slow. Here's what their website says "Then if you wish to have more than 1.5 kilobytes/second of bandwidth, you can subscribe to this service by clicking below." Are you getting more than 1.5 kb/s with their free client? For comparison, a 56K dialup modem is about 4.3 kb/s. --opm8
I just did a speed test... I get exactly 1.5 kb/sec with the free service, 110Kbytes/s with the pay service. I am only a swing trader, so I don't have a quote feed with IB, only use it to enter orders once every couple of days. But for $5 a month the service is a good deal I think. Probably will cost $5 a month in power to keep your pc on all the time at home