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After months and months of internet problems, having cable repair folks out to my house looking for problems, tinkering around with many ideas, and having my broker connection go down at least once, but usually 5 to 10 times a day, I tried one last thing: I plugged my hardware into a regular ol' power strip, instead of my UPS.
After doing that this morning, I have had zero disconnects today, a first in at least six weeks. The cable connection itself was not running through the UPS, though it has a place for this. My computer, one of my monitors, modem, and router were all through the UPS, and now they're straight to the wall through a power strip.
Is it possible that I just got a crappy UPS? I spent probably $90 or so:
I'm almost afraid to try another one, but unless things start acting up in the next day or two, I'll have to draw the conclusion that this was the problem. I do not recall many problems before I got the UPS, but then again I am not able to verify when the problems started in relation to this.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
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It is possible. Google sine wave UPS and you'll find some results, it will really depend on the type of power supply for your computer and items plugged into the UPS.
If it is a sine wave problem, replacing it with the same UPS won't solve the problem.
Question: how often does your power go out or do you have a power surge? If it is only once a year then do you really need to have one? I use to use one till I realized my power goes out once or twice a year and it is generally during severe storms, in which case I shut down anyways.
If the power did go out I can make trades from my cell phone so I can always close out any open orders within a couple of minutes.
Couple other ideas to replace your UPS.
Have you thought about getting a laptop as your trading computer? A laptop has a battery so if your power goes out it acts just like a UPS and you wont lose what you are working on.
Use a dedicated server for trading. I am currently using one and love it. Power and internet connection is always on and it has a better connection to my brokers trading servers than my home service does.
FWIW, I've purchased and used probably 20+ CyberPower UPS's in the last several years, and never encountered any problems. But I do know that certain PSU's do have problem with non-Sine Wave UPS's.
As for accessories, again never a problem. I have more UPS's than I can count in my home, and only three of them power computers, rest are for A/V equipment, routers, network equipment, cable modem, etc and I've never had a problem like what you described.
With a sine wave output UPS, isn't that only a factor when it's actually on battery backup mode? Or does it behave differently even when the power is on? Also for the model I have it says "850VA / 510W Simulated sine wave UPS" .. not sure what "simulated sine wave" is, I think we are getting into marketing nomenclature where there are many gray lines
A EE told me that perhaps the UPS is introducing just enough noise into the circuitry of the cable modem that an already borderline weak signal is becoming just weak enough to intermittently cause the problems (that's my non-EE interpretation). The thing is, it's not like the modem resets; it's a disconnect, and then it's back on maybe 10-20 seconds later. As an aside, this is why a redundant internet connection does me no good; by the time the other connection would be switched over, I might as well have just waited for my main one to get back to normal.
And, if any of your UPSs are sine wave output, can you give a recommendation on a specific model? I only need it for one PC and one monitor and one router and one modem, though it would be a nice bonus to connect all three monitors and possibly another device or two.
SD, thanks very much for the post -- I have considered this too, and the only reason I have one is if I were to have a trade left on overnight; even if odds are small of power going out, and even though I don't have a backup internet connection, it would give me peace of mind in that case. However, I usually don't do this and have only ever done it a few times, so you may be right, it may just not be worth it. However, during the day maybe once or twice during the last year the power has gone out for a split second, and in this case it would probably good to have it.
For your dedicated server idea, basically is it a remotely monitored PC, and so when your internet connection goes down, you still have guaranteed connectivity on their end, so that locally simulated orders like OCOs can still be handled properly?
What do you use for trading from your cell phone? I have looked into NinjaTerminal since I use NT for order routing, and this may be a very good solution for emergency trade placement (or a phone call to my broker would suffice I suppose).
Just realized that NinjaTerminal requires a strategy running on a copy of NT, so if computer goes down, apparently so does the ability to use NinjaTerminal. So much for that idea.
Correct on the connectivity and order handling. However, it is not gauranteed to be up and running 100% of the time. Nothing is 100%... more like 99.999% of the time. Even data centers go down from time to time but if I were a betting man I would put money on the my home service failing before the data center does.
I can tell you this; I use to get disconnects from my broker all the time. When I switched to the server it all but stopped. It went from daily to maybe once a month.
I use my brokers app. (MB Trading) It allows me to view positions place trades etc. I have my brokers number in my contacts in the case of an emergency.