It is taking 20 minutes for my NT to connect to my broker (Patsystems)

[Rocket130713]

Hello,

It's taking 20 minutes for NT on my PC to connect to my broker (Pats), this is way too long, it should only take a minute or two to connect to Pats. How can I fix this problem?

When I connect to my broker's TWO servers, NT seems to connect straight away (Within seconds) to my broker's trading server" (host server), but then it takes 20 minutes for NT to connect to my broker's "price feed server" (price server). NT must wait until it connects to both the trading and price server before it can flag that it has made a complete "connection" to my broker, and when this happens (after 20 minutes) the "Connecting - Patsystems" sign at bottom left of NT window turns "Green" and then says "Connected - Patsystems". The logs also say that both the primary connection and price feed have gone from saying "connecting" to "connected", but, this process takes 20 minutes which is way to long to wait for a connection to broker. I am based in Australia and my broker is based in Chicago USA. I am only trading futures markets on exchanges all located within the USA i.e. CME, ICE U.S., and NYSE LIFFE U.S. exchanges.

Thank you in advance. Much appreciated.

Regards,

Rod

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Hi Rod, so the connection does connect properly going to full green in NT's status bar after this time? Unfortunately we have heard of cases where connections could take up to this time to report fully connected, as a first step please ensure all connection details are 100% correctly entered as received from your broker, as mistypings could cause hangs / delays as well.

[Rocket130713]

Hi Bertrand, my broker has not been able to help and they said they dont really support ninjatrader (but they do support J-trader). They said to speak to NT support about my connection. Its interesting to note that Jason from NT_Support using my exact Pats connection settings (i emailed him my config.xml file) was able to log into my account in 2 minutes which is really fast compared to the 20 minutes it takes me to log-on.

It only takes me 3 seconds to connect to my broker's "trading server" but then takes 20 minutes to connect to my broker's "price server".

It also took me 20 minutes to connect to broker using my laptop with my laptops AV and firewall temporarily disabled so as to take this factor out of the equation.

Really need to be connecting within 1-2 minutes, as my brokers server maintenance is at 4:30 PM Central time and finishes at 4:50 PM, and i need to start and send orders at 5:00 pm open of CME session, so i have to always be able to connect within 10 minutes or else my trading set-up will not work properly.

Any ideas on what to do here to speed up connection to my brokers "price server"? Why would it take 20 minutes to connect to an IP address anyhow, even though im based in Australia which is far away??

Many thanks.

Regards,

Rod

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Thanks for the reply Rod - I would suggest you ping / tracert your brokers price server to see exactly where the connection takes so long to respond and furthermore it would be also best to talk to your ISP, so they could investigate any potential feedback issues to this IP address you need to reach.

If you connect over a router, it could be helpful to test as well being connected straight to the modem to isolate another variable of the setup out here.

[Rocket130713]

Dear NT_Support,

This is so frustrating for me. I have attached my NT logs below to help you see if there is any problems with my connection (its strange how it says that "NinjaTrader" does not support ICE_NYBOT exchange, what does this mean, maybe this is slowing the connection time down???),

Also, so as to help you, I did a ping and trace route and there did not seem to be any problems (i can email you the tracert results if you need to look at them, as i dont really know how to interpret them properly). i do know that when i pinged my brokers "price server" IP address it only took 298 milliseconds to do the ping i.e. average round trip was 298 ms. Is there anyone from NT_Support (or some other trader) who is from Australia and can connect to any futures broker in USA within 2 minutes??

I know that when i connected to MF Global using a platform called "strategy runner" that i could connect within say 10 seconds, and this was connecting to Pats too.

It also took 20 mins to connect without my firewall connected (isolation test), i.e straight from the wall to modem, so its not my firewall. I dont know if its my PC or whether its due to my location in australia, as NT_Jason could connect in 2 minutes using my account settings?

I also rang my ISP and they said they cant help me.

what should i do now?? I feel like I'm blocked now, and i have spent the last 6 months doing heaps of programming in TS EL all getting ready to use NT DLL + TS set-up. This is really painful for me.

thanks in advance for any help.

regards, rod.

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Hello Rod, can you please contact me directly via Help >> Mail to Support - I will try to set you up with extended tracing options to determine what items here contribute to the extended login time - have you seen it depending on the time of day as well?

We know of there areas that can add time for the process to connect as well:

1. Accounts enabled for this login (higher # > potentially slower connect)
2. Contracts enabled for this login (higher # > potentially slower connect)
3. Executions that need to be downloaded (higher # > potentially slower connect)

[Rocket130713]

Ok, but then, how can you explain that NT_Jason was able to connect to my broker (And account) in 2 minutes, using my Config.xml file? So it cant be due the following factors that you specify below:

1. Accounts enabled for this login (higher # > potentially slower connect)
2. Contracts enabled for this login (higher # > potentially slower connect)
3. Executions that need to be downloaded (higher # > potentially slower connect)

But, NT_Jason did his test on a different PC, using a different ISP, from a different country location (Netherlands), so maybe one of these 3 factors are causing the long log-in time.

i have already tried connecting to broker on 2 other different PC's, so I dont think its the PC thats causing the problem. It could somehow be the ISP im using???

I would not think its due to being in Australia, as Jason connected in 2 minutes and he is based in Nethlerands which is far away from Chicago USA also.

Has anyone else got any ideas or solutions?

[NinjaTrader_Bertrand]

Rod, that was to showcase what normally contributes to the behavior you've seen - we would need to isolate out what exact items it would be in your setup - for example Jason and you tested also on different database containing different instrument setups, so this could be a factor as well. If you would be up for testing on a fresh database file (we can keep your old one intact in case this would not be the issue area), then please contact me at support so we could continue working together to optimize this for you.

Thanks,

[Rocket130713]

It's 4am in the morning in Australia (12:00 PM in Chicago USA) and I was able to connect to my broker in 5 minutes.

BTW, how long does it normally take to connect to a broker that uses Zen-fire technology, like Dorman Trading broker?

Also, is TT any better than Zen-fire?

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Rod

[Radical]

BTW, how long does it normally take to connect to a broker that uses Zen-fire technology, like Dorman Trading broker?

For me it generally takes a few seconds to connect to Zen Fire.

[Rocket130713]

Wow, now that sounds more like it. FWIW it only takes me 10 seconds to connect to tradestation securities broker using tradestation platform. can i ask what broker you are using with zenfire??? at the moment im looking at Dorman Trading, as well as the Mirus+RCG+Zenfire combo.

The time taken to connect to broker using Pats seems to vary by far too much. Right now it takes only 5 minutes to connect to broker, but, 7 hours ago it was taking 30 minutes to connect to my broker. It is this volatility and uncertainty with respect to the "connection time" (time to log-on) that causes a lot of trouble for my trading set-up as what happens when broker server maintenance finishes at 4:50 pm and i have to try and connect at say 4:51 pm, if it takes 30 mins to log-on, I will not be up and trading until 5:21 pm which is 21 minutes late and past the open of the tradign session, which is a complete disaster for any trader.

So at the moment for me, pats connection is a disaster.

[Radical]

I'm using Mirus + RCG.

I think before you switch you should at least ask Pats why it's taking so long to connect. Even 1 or 2 minutes seems ridiculous to me if you have reasonable latency to the server you're connecting to. And I'm not an expert on this subject, but I don't think your location should factor into this at all, because being in Australia (providing you have a decent connection) should only add maybe 2 or 3 tenths of a second to your latency to a Chicago server vs being in the US.

[Rocket130713]

I just got off the phone to RCG, and they also told me about the RCG+Mirus+Zen-fire combo set-up. Thats a top idea to call Pats and see what they say about the long time it takes to connect to broker. im thinking it could be the brokers server at fault, or maybe its my ISP, who really knows. But my contact at RCG said he has some Aussie traders that use Ninja (Pats) also and it takes them 5 minutes or more to connect also, so that is a real disappointment. Thanks Radical for your help, really appreciate this. Regards, Rod.

[Rocket130713]

called Patsystems head office and they found problem which is my broker had authorized me to trade too many contracts (thousands, maybe 5000). we only wanted to trade 19 markets (under 200 contracts). NT has to download all of these contracts from Pats first in order to make a connection to broker price server. broker now in process of cutting down contracts authorized on Pats, now connection time reduced from 6 minutes down to 1.5 minutes. hopefully can get it down to 20 to 30 seconds. thanks for everyones help. really appreciate it. Regards, Rod.

[Rocket130713]

I still have the same problem. Consistently each day, at 5PM in Chicago (9AM in Australia) it takes only 1 minute from NT to connect to Pats. But at 5AM in Chicago (9PM in Australia) it takes 11 minutes to connect to Pats. In the morning (9am) in Australia NT seems to be able to download all the Pats contract info real quick, but at night it takes so much longer to download the data and the data gets downloaded in bursts very 10 seconds. Does anyone from NT have any ideas on what could be affecting these hugely variable data (Pats contract info) download times??

thanks in advance. regards, rod