Im new to TWS and my option charts and volume data/ open interest stopped working a few hours after market closed today (friday). I still get stock/index/ etc charts but no option charts and in my OPTION VOLUME window it says "market data not available" while the chart says "attempting to retreive data". My question is, do they shut off this data feed on the weekend or something, because i used it all week long after hours with no problem. Thanks
IB uses the weekend to do software maintenance and such. Therefore it is not always guaranteed that you have access to their servers and/or databases during the weekend. If you're lucky they are done with their work on Sunday.
I also experienced such problems occasionally even during regular weekday nights. IB once explained that they operate globally and have large infrastructure to update and backup, and it’s difficult for them to find time slots for maintenance periods that wouldn’t affect anyone. Though personally I think they could invest a bit more into additional data servers, just like other smaller companies that provide data do, without downtime. There are a few other such things that IB does that seem outdated and pointless, putting stress on their servers for no other reason than someone figuring out how to make things more complex than they should be. For example they could setup a $10/month server or use a CDN or AWS service that would host a CSV file with all IB contract ids/symbols. But right now you have to go through all kinds of hassles and use obsolete API that limits number of requests, or go through captcha on their website just to get basic info about a symbol/contract that has no reason to be heavily guarded or put stress on IB infrastructure. Even small website owners already figured out how to display/serve basic data to millions of people at minimal cost,
saturday morning... it's working again. Yea must have been some maintenance issues and sounds like something i will have to get used to. Thanks for the replies!