IB Gateway Server Selection and the Weekly Reset
Summary
The document explains a reported Saturday loss of access to Interactive Brokers historical data and asks whether TWS or IB Gateway can be directed to another regional server. The answer describes changing the server peer setting in the application’s configuration file, noting that the default peer may differ across regional downloads and that similar guidance may apply to TWS.
It cautions that changing regions is unlikely to avoid the outage. The cited status notice says services are unavailable worldwide during the Friday evening reset, which can fall on Saturday for users in other time zones. The account’s location and use of a VPN are part of the question, but the response does not establish that either determines server choice or provide a verified workaround. The server-setting suggestion is based on the respondent’s IB Gateway experience, so its application to other setups is not confirmed.
Key ideas
- IB Gateway uses a configuration file to specify a connection peer.
- Regional downloads may supply different default server settings.
- The respondent expects the same configuration approach may work for TWS, but reports testing it with IB Gateway.
- Interactive Brokers’ weekly reset is described as affecting all regions, so switching servers may not prevent downtime.
Tags
Full text
# InteractiveBrokers server outage every Saturday
# InteractiveBrokers server outage every Saturday
I am fetching some historical data from Interactive Brokers with their API. But I got a bit of annoying their HongKong history data server ('hkhdm' in the connection status window) get disconnected almost every Saturday. Even the TWS app cannot let me login last Saturday (I wonder I won't be able login hours later today). So my question is:
Is there someway to tell InteractiveBrokers TWS/Gateway app to use America or Europe server?
I have tried to set location to America or Europe in the login window, no luck. I also used a New York VPN, and that didn't work. BTW, I live in Sydney now, and my account was setup with a Chinese residential address. Thanks for any help or hint.
## Answer by Castedo (score 2)
https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/16335
### Answer to question of IB Gateway using other server
IB Gateway reads a "jts.ini" file to determine which server it should connect to. There is a "[communication]" section under which a "peer=" value is set. When I download IB Gateway from the IB US website the provided default jts.ini file contains:
```
[communication]
peer=gw1.ibllc.com:4000
```
Depending on whether you are installing on Windows or Mac a "jts.ini" file can be found in the wherever IB Gateway gets installed.
There are potentially other settings in your jts.ini file in use which might point to other servers. You can try also changing those addition setting if present or you can try and replace your existing jts.ini file with a completely new one contain only the above example (for the US server).
These instructions should also apply to TWS (however I'm using and testing with IB Gateway).
I'm guessing that if you download IB Gateway from the Europe IB website the provided default jts.ini file will point to the Europe server.
### However, you can't avoid the weekly reset
However, in the end, I don't think changing the server will work around your issue. IB says "During the Friday evening reset period, all services will be unavailable in all regions for the duration of the reset." on the IB System Status Page. My guess is you are observing this New York Friday evening reset which is Saturday in your timezone and is going to happen at the same time in all regions.Shown in full with attribution under the source's licence. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (Stack Exchange)
This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.