TWS version WTF

Discussion in 'Retail Brokers' started by NoMoreOptions, Apr 3, 2004.

  1. When will TWS servers detect client version and reject old versions after important protocol changes? When will this be implemented? It just does not get how to communicate. Let me tell you simply what to do. Plan and track you the goddamn protocol and internal changes. In advance, send bulletin message or even email to notify which old version will be obsolete. Then change!
     
  2. alanm

    alanm

    Again, what on earth are you talking about?

    I just logged in and did a couple test trades with build 752.6, dated 2002/01/31 (over two years old).

    IB has been amazing with respect to backwards compatibility of their servers.
     
  3. Thanks for your information.

    But some suggested that the incident on last Friday would be avoided by upgrading to the latest version.

    If what the conclusion of your testing is correct, IB may have wasted a lot of time and money to do a good job on unnecessary backward compatibility.


     
  4. alanm

    alanm

    Unnecessary?

    You really are warped.

    I give up.
     
  5. As far as I understand the protocol used by IB - it seemed to be FIX, or some enveloped FIX protocols (try using some TCP packet capturing program - e.g ethereal from http://www.ethereal.com/, or tcpdump(8) if you're running Linux/UNIX).
    The TWS application send FIX-heartbeats every now and then. Check out the FIX protocol website to understand more of this widely used standard.
    http://www.fixprotocol.org/

    That way the client versions is detached from the protocol versioning, which I guess is a very good thing.
    Paraphrased; a 12-year old and a 70-year old can communicate just as well using the same language, the 12-year old (or anyone else communicating with them) doesn't really need to be aware of a whole lot of backward compatability issues.
    :)