Interactive Brokers gateway losing connectivity

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moses
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Interactive Brokers gateway losing connectivity

Postby moses » 22 Aug 2013

Hi all,

I am copying a quick correspondence I had with Interactive Brokers yesterday, in case it's useful to someone else having the same issue.

I will ask IB this question tonight, but in case anyone knows already, please help! Is there any way for me to be notified by email (I am using Windows 7, not Linux as IB notes below) when the IB gateway loses connectivity?



MY QUESTION TO IB

Hello,

I would really appreciate your assistance on this very important issue, for me.

I am using the IB gateway (with my Multicharts trading platform, which connects to the IB API gateway and sends orders automatically).
Last night (I don't know the exact time unfortunately) the IB gateway lost connection, and I missed my trade stops, resulting in material losses.
I was under the impression that the IB gateway does not disconnect at any time. Can you please let me know if and when I may lose connectivity to the gateway?
Also, is there any way to receive an email alerting me to the fact that connectivity has been lost? Or any other way to be notified?

I note, for reference, that my internet connection was working properly without disconnects the whole time.

Thanks a lot
Andreas


IB'S REPLY

The IBGateway does not need to be restarted once a day like the Trader Workstation, so it can stay up and running 24 hours over 24 but nevertheless the IBGateway is as well affected by the restart of our servers which happens once a day according to the schedule mentioned in this page:
http://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/so ... entity=llc

During this time frame the systems could be not available for a certain period. This will cause the IBGateway to disconnect from the servers. Usually it will reconnect automatically once the servers are up again.

Since this is a scheduled maintenance which is performed every day, we do not send any alerts, email or warnings, but since you user looks like connecting from a Linux machine, you might want to create a script which checks the ibgateway.DAY.log (When DAY is the first three letter of the current weekday) which is located in the installation directory of the IBGateway and sends an email (via sendmail) in case the keywords "Disconnection" or "Disconnected" are logged.
I guess many examples of such scripts can be found on Internet.

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TJ
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Re: Interactive Brokers gateway losing connectivity

Postby TJ » 29 Aug 2013

Hi all,
I am copying a quick correspondence I had with Interactive Brokers yesterday, in case it's useful to someone else having the same issue.
I will ask IB this question tonight, but in case anyone knows already, please help! Is there any way for me to be notified by email (I am using Windows 7, not Linux as IB notes below) when the IB gateway loses connectivity?
::
You can set up an email or SMS alert.

see post #13
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6845

eg. if no new ticks come in for 1 minute, then send an email alert.

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TJ
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Re: Interactive Brokers gateway losing connectivity

Postby TJ » 29 Aug 2013

also see this post:

Loss of Broker Connectivity Alert
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9890

Xyzzy
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Re: Interactive Brokers gateway losing connectivity

Postby Xyzzy » 11 Sep 2013

If your goal is simply to maintain a continuous connection with Interactive Brokers, there's another possible solution -- use TWS (rather than the IB Gateway) in combination with a helper app called TWSStart. TWSStart will log you into TWS automatically, and it will then restart TWS automatically and log you back in if TWS ever shuts down (either for its daily restart or for any other reason, like an unexpected crash).

I've been using it for over a year, and it works great. The downsides are that it doesn't work for IB Gateway, and it requires you to disable the two-factor authentication (so it can log in for you automatically, without the key card).

http://twsstart.free.fr/

arjfca
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Re: Interactive Brokers gateway losing connectivity

Postby arjfca » 12 Sep 2013

The downsides are that it doesn't work for IB Gateway, and it requires you to disable the two-factor authentication (so it can log in for you automatically, without the key card).
I think it do work with IB Gateway. Setup may be different. Best way may be to contact the software creator BeeJay

I'm using it with TWS

TwsStart : http://twsstart.free.fr/

Martin
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