Latency arbitrage for high frequency trading is leading to a rebirth in microwave vs. fiber, notably between New York and Chicago. Microwave data mom is an exceedingly robust and mature technology, unlike free space optics, though.
Free space optics gets shiny new snake-oil paint job
A technology more than 15 years old is getting a brand-new publicity brush-up because it's been discovered by the high-frequency trading community. Free space optics is older than The Register, even: it's been around so long that in the mid-1990s, it was even exciting in Australia, where a company called Davnet was founded to …
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Tuesday 18th February 2014 18:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Making Stuff Faster
The PBS Nova series Making Stuff covered the construction of microwave-based trading networks between Chicago and New York as part of an episode entitled Making Stuff Faster at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/making-more-stuff.html#making-stuff-faster Look about 3/4 of the way through the video or see the transcript on that same page.
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Monday 17th February 2014 09:52 GMT Pen-y-gors
The world would be a better place
if the stock exchanges banned high-frequency trading ('gambling') - it serves no real-world purpose, i.e. the companies whose stock is being traded, and the 'real' investors in those companies derive no benefit ( the only reason for having stock exchanges in the first place).
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Monday 17th February 2014 18:12 GMT John Smith 19
"if the stock exchanges banned high-frequency trading ('gambling') -"
It's been suggested.
There are counter arguments.(that you're looking to install a digital filter on the trading of every stock) I think there's an El Reg article about it by someone much more clueful than I.
But I like the banning idea as well. .
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Monday 3rd March 2014 13:01 GMT PyLETS
Re: The world would be a better place
There seems little point banning based on legal minimum duration of exposure to risk of ownership, though there would be a moral case for that. It seems to me to make more sense to introduce the Tobin Tax on such transactions - a very tiny percentage of the value of the transaction which encourages longer term thinking by the investor, and which benefits public services also.
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Monday 17th February 2014 13:17 GMT JeffyPoooh
And in related news...
The BBC World Service top-of-the-hour 'pips' arrive at my house about 15 seconds late (referenced to a variety of reliable time sources). I suspect that SiriusXM satellite radio is fed through the Interweb, and the latencies here and there, not to mention the trip to and from the satellites, and some buffering in the radio itself, it all adds up to about 15 seconds. Sometimes 18. Making it all kinda pointless in a charming sort of way.
I expect that the 'High Frequency' Traders will eventually move to neutrino communications, shooting neutrinos straight through the Earth's core. Shorter path.
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Monday 17th February 2014 16:50 GMT Grahame 2
FSO / Millimetre wave vs. microwave
FSO and millimetre wave are interesting in that while they have the same latency as microwave, they offer much higher bandwidth. The trade off is that they don’t propagate as far as microwave before they need repeating, having a tower every 10km vs 30-40km.
Systems offering a combination of millimetre wave and laser are now available, they have the advantage that while they are both affected by atmospheric conditions, millimetre wave is badly affected by moisture (rain, fog) and laser is less affected by moisture, but is affected by scintillation (heat haze), since these conditions rarely occur together hybrid systems provide a much more reliable signal.
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Monday 3rd March 2014 13:05 GMT PyLETS
Wrong application
FSO as I see it is more an educational application for student learning projects and hobbyists. The effect of weather conditions on propagation are reliable enough for hobbyist applications, but probably not reliable enough for transaction markets.
For those wanting to play, have a look at Ronja .
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
