How Microwave Transmission Is Linking Financial Centers At Near-Light Speed

The L.A. Times has a short but compelling article about the state of the art (and coming state of the art) in dedicated networking technology in one of the applications where you'd expect the customers to care most about it: connecting financial trading centers. Milliseconds count, and the traders count milliseconds. From the article, one example: "[New York-based networking company] Strike, whose ranks include academics as well as former U.S. and Israeli military engineers, hoisted a 6-foot white dish on a tower rising 280 feet above the Nasdaq Stock Market's data center in Carteret, N.J., just outside New York City. Through a series of microwave towers, the dish beams market data 734 miles to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's computer warehouse in Aurora, Ill., in 4.13 milliseconds, or about 95% of the theoretical speed of light, according to the company. Fiber-optic cables, which are made up of long strands of glass, carry data at roughly 65% of light speed."

Comments

But

[rossdee]

There was a story a few weeks ago about someone in Chicago that had a faster than light connection (when the Fed issued a statement about interest rates)

Re:But

[khallow]

Dealers profit from market inefficiency, inserting themselves as middlemen and profiting by pushing prices away from their efficient levels.

"Pushing prices away"? If you have a "dealer" trading away from the "efficient levels" and a "dealer" trading towards the "efficient levels", I can tell you who will have money at the end of the day and who won't.

Someone who pursues a dumb strategy is going to lose their wealth to someone who isn't.

Why not just let ultimate lenders and borrowers meet with technology, obsoleting the "market makers" raising prices because of their profit-seeking motives?

That's the stock markets in a nutshell. Yet they still end up with market makers.

Re:Nothing "near" about it

[Pseudonym Authority]

Nope, nope, nope. The speed of light is c, the speed of light in various materials is denoted as factors of c (0.65c or 0.99999c).

Mod parent up: it's called VELOCITY FACTOR, folks!

[storkus]

For some place that's supposed to be for nerds who, unlike me, finished college, this discussion is embarrassing. Parent post and 1 or 2 other posts have it right, and this is something that every radio guy knows as well.

Wikipedia references: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_factor
More general discussion with heavy math: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_velocity
The reason for it all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refractive_index
This is straight from the horse's mouth: http://www.corning.com/WorkArea/downloadasset.aspx?id=39403

Re:Nothing "near" about it

[Trogre]

The speed of light in a vacuum is c. Otherwise you are correct.

Look up cherenkov radiation for a cool example of particles exceeding the speed of light in the local medium.