Honestly, I think something is going wrong here with TWS's connection to IB's servers in some cases. At my office (where the issue happens for me), I can literally leave my desk, go make a leisurely cup of coffee, and get back to my desk and the login process isn't completed yet.... and then when it does complete, it does show me a popup of "Downloading settings from server failed". But after I clear that dialog box, everything works fine for me. This happens on two separate workstations for me.
For what it's worth, I just tested my network connection here at the office using
http://testmy.net, and the combined results are:
Download 77.3 Mbps (9.7 MB/s)
Upload 14 Mbps (1.7MB/s)
Oh, and if I ping one of IB's servers, I get:
C:\>ping -t cdc1.ibllc.com
Pinging cdc1.ibllc.com [8.17.22.31] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=245
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=245
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=245
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=245
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=245
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=245
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=245
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=245
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=245
Reply from 8.17.22.31: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=245
Ping statistics for 8.17.22.31:
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 4ms, Maximum = 5ms, Average = 4ms
Control-C
^C
C:\>