IB Market Data question

Thanks alanm I will search for that thread. Do you use IB? I have researched everywhere about the customer service and I can't decifer if the complaints are legit or user error.

My worst fear with going to IB would be my internet goes down or my new computer craps out somehow and I am on hold for eternity trying to flatten my postion.

Are my fears justfied or not? I know that's a loaded question, and yes I have read almost every review about IB over the last 12 months and google searched them too.
 
IB certainly does have some customer service issues, but at the same time I've been using them for over a year without any real problems. I do have an advisor account and I've found the "pro" customer service people to be a bit better than average, but it's hit and miss like I've had with other brokers as well (Etrade, TD Waterhouse, Scottrade all have had their share of idiots I've talked to on the phone). At least with IB I'm paying less to deal with idiots :D

A lot of the customer service issues are also caused by stupid customers -- doing things they shouldn't do and then complaining about it after. There are some real issues, but also a lot of crap where someone shorted 10x their account value, IB covered it for them and they complain about the price they got.

The only way to know is to try for yourself :)
 
There are many threads about backup ISPs and other kinds of failover you can set up and use. try a search for dual wan router.

I've seen it mentioned many times here, having a backup broker and therefore the ability to offset open positions if your connection goes down is a very good idea. I'd recommend MB Trading for this, they have futures and you can get a broker on the line pretty easily. They're similar to IB in fees but their API is windows only, and has (had?) some issues when I looked at it about a year ago. Also they're not 24x7 but that is improving, you can trade more hours than you used to be able to.

Tradestation is another option, their fees are also pretty good and if you trade 10 round trip futures per month they waive the $100 monthly fee.

SSB
 
Actually I meant search on elitetrader for it to find the discussions about it. Personally I don't recommend the dual wan router -- it's still a single point of failure and if it goes down you lose net connectivity anyway. I have two routers each plugged into my 2 ISP connections so if one dies I still have connectivity (also the dual WAN routers I tried all had reliability issues).

SSB
 
I agree with SSB, and have the same setup. Two routers/switches, two net connections, two production computers, with some apps running on one and some on the other, though all apps are installed on both. I also learned, when one of the routers failed, to have another switch standing by to plug the devices that are plugged into the ports on the failed router into.
 
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