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

Posted by timothy on from the faster-than-you-can-read dept.

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."

6 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Dodgy Customers by mrbluze · · Score: 4, Insightful

    here you'd expect the customers to care most about it:

    Yeah, and what customers? Electronic trading supercomputers.

    None of this makes a difference to honest trading except to ensure its loss making properties.

    --
    Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
    1. Re:Dodgy Customers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Traders with ultra fast computers place orders at a fixed price. If no one nibbles immediately and they can't make a profit in a few milliseconds, the order is cancelled. The current system makes "traders" very rich because they "cheat" legally.

  2. Re:Improving the lives of ordinary citizens by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Only if not used to take advantage over said ordinary citizens.

  3. "and the traders count milliseconds" by superdude72 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The fact that the traders count milliseconds is proof that they are just scam artists. Parasites, producing nothing of value. High-speed trading is nothing but a mechanism for funneling money to the rich from everyone else.

  4. All this effort for parsitism by dbIII · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It looks like another symptom of why China is going to kick our ass. All this effort put into getting crumbs from what other people do instead of doing something tangible.

  5. Re:But by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ask where all the money to fund this is coming from.

    HFT doesn't actually manufacture anything or provide a valuable service. It's purely exploiting the numbers for profit, out-trading slower traders. The profits made in HFT are ultimately at the expense of everyone else on the stockmarket who can't keep up. Which likely includes your pension fund.