Did bufferbloat cause the 2010 flashcrash?

Thu Aug 6 17:44:34 UTC 2015

On Sun, Aug 2, 2015 at 11:19 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> This guy seems to think so, and his arguments seem pretty
> convincing to me, but I don't understand the financial system
> as well as I might.

Hi Jay,

My read is that the author got it upside down.

The intermediate cause of the problem was propagation delay (including
buffer bloat) which induced an oscillating set of states in the
trading software.

The root cause was a flipping jassack trying to out-time his
competitors by assuming a degree of instantaneity which proved untrue.
Don't do that. Don't make assumptions about network timing. You can
count on being wrong. If timing matters to your application, find a
way to continuously measure.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

P.S. Recruiters: No, I do NOT want to move to New York City and
engineer another half millisecond out of your network. I would,
however, welcome a law which bans both buying and selling instruments
of the same stock or commodity within 24 hours.

-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>

Did *bufferbloat* cause the 2010 flashcrash?

Did bufferbloat cause the 2010 flashcrash?