Yes, I do have firewall software - zonealarm to be precise. Can't be too careful. I also want to try "Norton Internet Security" - supposedly it prevents banner ads and popups from appearing, but it kinda sounds too good to be true. I really hate those friggin' animated ads they have on yahoo finance now...they make me want to kill somebody when I see a goddamn lexus tearing across my screen. Fuckers....but I digress- Is there a specific proxy setting I should try? The thing is, I've had the firewall software for much longer than I've been having connection problems to IB. But anyway, I also have a router, but I don't think that could be the problem, and again, I've had the router for much longer than I've had these problems. I seem to recall DEF mentioning about 2 weeks ago that IB was replacing switches, and that was the source of the problems lately. I'll look into my ISP first and see what the deal is. I typically will get periods of 1-2 hours where I get disconnected like once every 5min. It's annoying. Thanks for your help!
hey dude, before you go off half-cocked why don't you sit back, take a deep breath and deduce all the possibilities... BEFORE you start the blame game! not after.
From reading internal reports, it seems that there hasn't been any downtime of late other than the usual minor probklems that occur at a particular ECN or exchange. As I understand, the IB TWS continually checks for packet loss on messages sent to/from the servers. If there is any loss, it will disconnect the TWS. I'm not a techie but if you have been having ISP problems and other users are not experiencing the same disconnect issues, then most likely the problem is not IB's. Contact technical assistance at IB if you do not get anywhere with your ISP. They can do trace routes and other tests to check on the quality of your connection.
Do you rely on only one ISP (DSL) ? BTW, never do that. Connect thru another ISP via modem when you get those disconnects and see if there is any difference.
At some point in the last week or so, I too had trouble with delays and disconnects to IB (but not other sites). At the time, I did a traceroute to IB, and found it going through alternet (UUNet) for the bulk of the trip from my ISP. Historically, from ISPs in southern cal anyway, UUNet has always shown worse statistics (packet loss, propagation delay, etc.), and seems to have more routing problems than other networks. Just now, I traced it again, and see it taking Sprint instead, which is how I remember it being a long time ago. Times are all < 200ms, while I remember those from AlterNet being much higher (250-300ms).