Hi speed trading - hi speed monitoring
Paul Graydon
paul at paulgraydon.co.uk
Fri Feb 17 01:08:31 UTC 2012
On 2/16/2012 3:03 AM, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> Nanosecond Trading Could Make Markets Go Haywire
> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/02/high-speed-trading/
>
> "Below the 950-millisecond level, where computerized trading occurs so
> quickly that human traders can't even react, no fewer than 18,520
> crashes and spikes occurred."
>
> Anyone who has managed a network knows that when you look at your
> MRTG/Cacti graphs at 5min, 10min ,15min intervals - all looks well.
> Start looking at 1sec intervals and you will see spikes that hit 100%
> of capacity - even on networks running at 25% average utilization.
>
> I guess trading and networking do have many unseen similarities.
>
> -Hank
>
Anecdotally, I had an interview years ago for a small-ish futures
trading company based in London. The interviewer had to pause the
interview part way through whilst he investigated a 10ms latency spike
that the traders were noticing on a short point-to-point fiber link to
the London Stock Exchange. He commented that the traders were far
better at 'feeling' when an connection was showing even a trace of lag
compared to normal than anything he'd set up by way of monitoring (not
sure how good his monitoring was, though.)
Paul
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