Rithmic “Session Count Exceeded”: What It Means and How to Clear It
You are trading normally and NinjaTrader throws you out with the message “Disconnect enforced by broker or 2nd login to the same account”. Most often it means another program logged in with your credentials and pushed your session count over its maximum.
Nothing is broken. Each Rithmic login has a maximum number of simultaneous sessions, which your firm or broker sets, and something else has just taken one.
What consumes a session
More things than people expect.
- RTrader Pro. Left open on the same machine or another one, it holds a session for as long as it is running.
- A second computer. A home desktop and a laptop both connected with the same login are two sessions.
- A VPS still running. This is the common one. The VPS does not stop consuming a session because you closed the window on your local machine.
- A mobile or web platform provided by your firm, signed in with the same credentials.
- Market data plus order routing counted separately. Depending on configuration these can consume more than one session between them.
How to free one up
Work through the list above and close what you are not using. In particular, check RTrader Pro and check any VPS. If you cannot get to the machine holding the session, ask your firm whether it can clear sessions from its end.
There is also a configuration lever. The documented fix for a persistent session problem is to turn off Market Data in RTrader Pro and to untick plug-in mode in NinjaTrader, which reduces what each connection consumes. Whether that is right for you depends on how you are using the two applications together, so change one thing at a time and reconnect between changes.
Where this gets confusing with more than one Rithmic login
If you trade more than one Rithmic login, two different messages are easy to mix up.
They have different causes.
The first is the running-connection message. NinjaTrader Desktop runs one Rithmic connection at a time. Start a second Rithmic connection while one is running and NinjaTrader reports that the provider already has a running connection. If your accounts are on more than one Rithmic login, Unlimited Prop Firm Connections, sold separately, lets you manage multiple Rithmic accounts at once.
The second is the session-count message described here, which comes from the session cap on each Rithmic login. Using one login in two places at once still counts against it.
Telling the two apart is the useful skill. If your firms have separate logins and NinjaTrader reports that the provider already has a running connection, that is not a session cap. If you are hitting the cap on one login, the answer is to find what else is signed in.
A note on the running-connection message
The running-connection message is easy to mix up with this one. If NinjaTrader reports that a provider already has a running connection, that is not a duplicate and not a session cap. As described above, this message appears whenever a second Rithmic connection starts, whatever login it uses. Disconnect the Rithmic connection that is already running before you connect another, and untick Connect on start up on all but one.
Affordable Indicators, Inc. is not affiliated with or endorsed by Rithmic, NinjaTrader, or any prop firm or broker named here; your firm’s and broker’s own terms govern how you may use your account, so check with them first.