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. Rithmic limits how many simultaneous sessions a single login may hold, 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, most firms can clear sessions from their 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 several firms
If you run more than one prop firm, two different limits can get in the way of your second connection.
They need different fixes.
The first is the NinjaTrader platform restriction. NinjaTrader marks its Rithmic connections as one at a time, so it refuses to connect a second firm while the first is running, regardless of how many sessions Rithmic would happily give you. That is a platform limit and it is what Unlimited Prop Firm Connections lifts.
The second is the Rithmic session cap described here, which applies per login. Lifting the platform limit does not raise a Rithmic session cap, and no add-on can. 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 refuses the second one with a message that the provider already has a running connection, that is the platform. If you are hitting the cap on one login, that is Rithmic and the answer is to find what else is signed in.
A note on the running-connection message
One more 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. It is the one-Rithmic-connection-at-a-time platform restriction described above, and it 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.