Ever since I started using IQFeed, I've noticed that the feed both crashes at random points throughout the day and stops sending a heartbeat....however, I haven't noticed any discernable pattern from these crashes.

I'm checking for a connection right now by resetting a volatile java boolean value each time anything is received on any of the three ports (Admin port, L1 port, and L2 port). Since I expect to get a heartbeat from both the admin port and the L1 port every sec, I wait 5 seconds to reset the process / feed if I haven't heard anything.

The odd thing is that there can be a week without any problems, and then lately it has consistent been having problems.

1) Why does the IQConnect application stop sending a heartbeat?
2) What is the best way to reset the IQConnect process?

A general question for the community is to whether or not anyone else sees this problem

I see this as well from time to time.
The heartbeats stop for no apparent reason and a restart is needed.

I also get random failures with the heartbeat message. I added a check to measure the delay against the PC clocks. If the delay is > 30 secs I display a dialog to let the user know while at the same time switching off the connections and feed which at least prevents crashes but it does require a restart.

It looks like there might be a couple different issues at play here. The first being the lack of timestamps (heartbeats) to your app and why IQConnect isn't automatically recovering from this scenario (it should already disconnect and reconnect to the servers anytime there hasn't been any data on the connection for more than 5s).

The second would be dplneural's issue where the timestamps are still coming in but are delayed (at least that's the way I interpreted your report). I'll address the second issue first. My initial guess here is that your app or your customer's internet connection is not able to keep up with the feed causing there to be a queue of data in the servers waiting to be delivered to your machine (and your app). Unfortunately, if this is the case, the only possible solutions would be to upgrade the machine and/or internet connection or reduce the amount of symbols you are watching. Of course there would also be workarounds similar to what you have implemented (detect the issue and disconnect/reconnect to clear the queue). I'm happy to work with you on troubleshooting/verifying this issue if you want to get in touch with me via the developer support email address or via chat via our website during business hours.

As far as the first issue. I can't think of anything off the top of my head that would cause such a scenario to occur. As I mentioned before, if IQConnect stops getting data from the server, then it should automatically disconnect and reconnect to another server after 5s. In those cases, there should be no need to do anything in terms of the connection. Your app will get a notice that a disconnection and a reconnection has occurred and then the data should start streaming again. As far as the best way to restart the feed, the feed is designed to shut down 5s (by default) after the last client has terminated it's connection. In theory, if you simply disconnect, IQFeed should shut down on it's own and be ready to go again. If you find this isn't the case once it gets into this state, then it might give us some clues as to what is going on. Once again, I'm happy to help you troubleshoot this but unfortunately, in this case, I don't have a whole lot to start from. The best place to start would be to try and detect if there are network issues going on at the same time as the issues occur. Can you guys send me an email to developer support with some basic information about your setup? Machine Info (process/OS/RAM/etc) as well as some basic information about your network connection (bandwidth/latency to our servers/etc)?

Hi Steve,

as for the machine, I am running Asus i7 processor with 16GB RAM and 2 x SSD's while watching only 4 symbols. The heartbeat actually stops so the problem could be internet related at either end but having said that I run an app to check time against the atomic clocks and it is unaffected.

The heartbeat problem is random...it can go for days without problem and then stop several times in a session.

My app shows approx. 22 MB as working set memory and 8 MB private working set memory so it is not exactly placing a huge demand on the available RAM,