Quote from lampshade:
Thx a lot for your answer.
Browsing through IB discussion board, I found out that there is a new interface being tested - IBGateway , albeit java and client based, enabling fix protocol without leased line, and (hopefully) decoupling order routing from tws (and market data).
Take care.
The IBgateway has been available for a while. I'll make sure the marketing publicizes it.
It is a lightweight process, which aside from the authentication (i.e. verify the validity of the username and the correctness of the password) can be user configured to do two things:
1) open a socket, to which the user can connect and send (and receive) FIX order and execution messages
2) provide market data to the API based clients