I finally found time to fix my frequent (up to 5x/day) Interquote data outages. I used TraceRoute and spoke with Interquote (BTW, never had a problem getting through by phone or e-mail), UUNet (re alter.net), and my ISP.
Upgrading from a 33.6 kb to 56 kb (X2) shortened not only the hop from my computer to my ISP and but also enabled a more direct route from my ISP to the backbone. As I understand it, this seems to have given enough clearance wrt the 300 msec Winsock limit used by Interquote to detect broken connections.
I know, however, of another user who experiences frequent outages with a cable modem.
Interestingly, that same user appears to get quotes 0 - 50 sec faster when the quotes are coming through. (Based on our small sampling, the longer delays appear to occur near market open and close.) This delay drives me to reconsider Signal, BMI, etc. (I switched to IQ from DBC MarketWatch and PCQuote MarketSmart reloadable web pages.)
BTW, my other problems with IQ are the 1-2 day delay in updating their historical server (obviously, it should be done the same day) and failure to reflect stock splits in the historical data base. |
