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Posts Tagged ‘dark fiber’

Trading Beyond the Horizon

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Available Now: 2010 Trading Beyond the Horizon

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In 2010, financial markets participants will continue to expand their trading activities as liquidity increasingly becomes fragmented, seeking alpha in new markets, best execution in dark pools, arbitrage opportunities across the order book and by implementing high frequency and complex, multi-leg, cross asset class strategies.

The successful operations – whether they be the proprietary desks of traditional broker/dealers, specialist high frequency and algorithmic traders, or quantitative hedge funds –  will leverage a trading infrastructure that combines high performance analytical, algorithmic and order routing platforms with the lowest latency access to multiple, geographically dispersed execution venues.

Multi-market trading – leveraging a fragmented market landscape – introduces new challenges, even for trading firms that have mastered the complexities of low-latency execution using approaches such as co-location and proximity.  Those mechanisms, while still relevant, provide a less complete solution when trading across markets that are geographically dispersed.

New entrants into the market for connectivity and proximity services include organizations that are themselves market participants, such as sell-side firms offering sponsored access and DMA, and liquidity venues, which are now providing global order routing networks, in some cases channelling order flow to their competitors.

Those service providers join traditional players including telcos, hosting companies and value-added extranet vendors, who often bundle trading applications with connectivity.

The bottom line: For multi-market trading, optimization of long-haul and metro communications links, combined with smart use of co-location, is an imperative for achieving the lowest latency, and this requires an understanding of connectivity offerings at a deep, granular level.

This  industry briefing explains the drivers for fragmentation and multi-market trading, the evolving landscape of market access, and explores connectivity approaches to minimize latency.

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Knowledgeportal Low Latency and Dark Fiber News

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

Check out the newest knowledgeportal to support low latency and dark fiber news and resources.

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CFN Services Joins Switch and Data GeoReachSM Partnership

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

TAMPA, Fla. – December 2, 2009 – Switch and Data (NASDAQ: SDXC), a leading provider of network-neutral data center and Internet exchange services, announced today that CFN Services, a leading ultra low-latency network and custom fiber optic network integrator in the financial industry, has joined Switch and Data’s GeoReach partnership program.  CFN will provide clients with turnkey or custom-designed, low latency interconnections to multiple regional exchanges from Switch and Data’s New York and Toronto Financial EcoCentersSM.  CFN FiberSource(r) Advisor provides professional services to assist financial firms in their regional or global network design, planning, and strategy to enhance their individual electronic trading strategies.

CFN Services, the low-latency leader, provides low-latency global exchange connectivity; offering specific ultra low-latency solutions for the trading areas in Toronto, Chicago, New York/ New Jersey Metro, Washington DC, Sao Paulo, London/London Metro, Frankfurt and Tokyo.   CFN is recognized as one of the only network providers to offer the Low Latency Guarantee along with a Latency Improvement Plan. The key to the integrated solution provided by CFN Services is the ability to identify metro fiber, long haul, and the collocation space to piece together the carrier networks onto one optimal path.   CFN sets itself apart from other transport vendors by offering carrier neutrality, professional services, fully managed services and the ability to design and implement custom fiber networks.

“We are proud to be part of Switch and Data’s new GeoReach program,” said David Conrad, Vice President of Finanical Market Sales, CFN Services. “CFN and Switch and Data can now deliver a complete low-latency solution in the most ideal market locations in New York and Toronto. Under this partnership, we can implement a competitive and comprehensive solution to the most demanding high frequency trading or latency-sensitive infrastructure.”

Switch and Data’s GeoReach partnership program is a select group of providers who have engineered their networks to meet the needs of the high frequency trading community. GeoReach partners have engineered optimum paths from Switch and Data’s EcoCenters to each of the regional liquidity providers that satisfy the requirements of the most latency-sensitive infrastructure. Firms can focus on their core and add each new ATS or Exchange using a low cost, minimal footprint while still maintaining ultra low latency communication across the markets.

“Adding CFN Services to our GeoReach partner program in our New York and Toronto Financial EcoCenters enhances our ability to offer customers ultra-low-latency connectivity to their desired exchanges,” said John Panzica, Vice President of Switch and Data’s Financial Services Practice.  “As more customers utilize trading strategies across the entire market landscape, a selection of optimized paths to the region’s liquidity providers becomes ever more crucial. CFN’s continual optimization creates a compelling story for firms seeking to stay ahead of the curve.”

GeoReach Partners are a critical element of Switch and Data’s Financial EcoCenters which provide mission-critical infrastructure to meet the security, volume and low-latency requirements of the electronic trading community.  These EcoCenters aggregate an ecosystem of the pre and post- trade service provider, buy-side and sell-side communities into Switch and Data sites located in the geographic center of the major liquidity providers in New York and Toronto.

About CFN Services

CFN Services, the Low Latency Leader, is a managed telecom infrastructure services company providing network services for the Enterprise, Public Sector and Carrier Markets, specializing in network design, planning, deployment, and managed services, including: Low Latency Global Exchange Connectivity, Global, Regional and metro network design and cost optimization and mobile backhaul optimization

CFN Services specializes in Data Center optimization ensuring the long haul network enhances the Enterprise distributed network strategy. CFN Services leverages FiberSource®, a global knowledge-based platform that can view all available dark and lit fiber, collocation, and lit buildings; providing the ability to quickly identify and design ultra low latency solutions. Learn how CFN Services can ensure you are Optimizing the Power of your Network www.cfnservices.com

About Switch and Data

Switch and Data is a premier provider of network-neutral data centers that house, power and interconnect the Internet. Leading content companies, enterprises and communications service providers rely on Switch and Data to connect to customers and exchange Internet traffic. Switch and Data has built a reputation for world-class service, delivered across the broadest colocation footprint and richest network of interconnections in North America. Switch and Data operates 34 sites in the U.S. and Canada, provides one of the highest customer satisfaction scores for technical and engineering support in the industry, and is home to PAIX® — the world’s first commercial Internet exchange.

Important information about Switch and Data is routinely posted to the investor relations section of the company’s website www.switchanddata.com. For copies of all Switch and Data press releases and SEC filings, please visit the website. To automatically receive Switch and Data financial news by email, please visit the website and subscribe to Email Alerts. Investors are encouraged to check Switch and Data’s website frequently to access the most up-to-date information.

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Mark Casey to Speak at Financial Market Structure Event

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Mark Casey, President of CFN Services, will be discussing the ability to mitigate risk from your low latency connectivity strategy utilizing a solution that alleviates dependency on single source providers and provides an integrated hosting and connectivity strategy.  Mark brings his experience from his over year 20year history  in telecommunication networks having worked at such companies at AT&T, MCI and CSX Fiber Networks. Mark Casey was the managing director of CSX Fiber Networks and spearheaded the spin off of CSX Fiber Network  to form what is now CFN Services.  CFN Services also acquired the proprietary asset FiberSource® which is a knowledge-based platform delivering access to over 550 carrier networks globally including more than 100 submarine systems; providing direct visibility into all available dark and lit fiber options, collocation facilities, and metro fiber rings for optimal deployment to any global financial center worldwide. This experience and tool set provides Mark the ability to have a deep understanding and knowledge required for an Global Connectivity Exchange Solutions.

Event Name: Switch and Data Presents: Financial Market Structure: Panel Event

Event Date: 11/19/2009 – 11/19/2009

Event Location: Helmsley Hotel, 212 East 42nd Street, NY, NY 10017

Panelist:

Host:
John Panzica, Vice President, Financial Services Practice, Switch and Data

Moderator
Kevin McPartland, Senior Analyst, TABB Group

Panelists
Nigel Faulkner, Managing Director, CTO Equities Trading, Goldman Sachs
George Hessler, Executive Vice President, Lime Brokerage
William Warner Director, Sales Engineering, Reliance Globalcom
Mark Casey, President, CFN Services, Incorporated
Josh Schubkegel, Exective Director, Client Facing Technology, UBS

Event Description: Financial Market Structure: Architectural and Infrastructure Challenges in the New Trading World Many new material changes have firms overhauling their trading infrastructure. How does your overall strategy stack up against the next guy? Join us for a panel discussion about the latest trends and challenges that have firms re-designing for 2010.

Event Website: http://www.switchanddata.com/Financial/Fall-Event

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WSTA Resource Guide

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

WSTA Resource Guide: CFN Services

CFN Services is a managed infrastructure services company providing network services for the Financial Markets, specializing in network design, planning, deployment, and managed services, for ultra- low latency networking. CFN Services leverages FiberSource®, a global knowledge-based platform that identifies all available dark and lit fiber, collocation, and lit buildings; providing the ability to quickly identify and design optimal ultra-low latency solutions.

Contact Information:
www.cfnservices.com
Judy May
lowlatency@cfnservices.com
703.788.6534
2325 Dulles Corner Blvd 5th Fl
Herndon, VA 20171

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Fiber Characteristics that Affect Latency

Friday, August 21st, 2009

cfn_blue_dot

Ensure you have all the facts before you make a choice between Dark and Lit Fiber.

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TMC Interview with Mark Casey, CFN Services

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

TMC NewsroomCFN Services discusses the electronic trading space in reference to low latency networking. CFN Services is the leader in the low latency network space. CFN Services has changed the low latency market by introducing: Performance Level SLA, Latency Improvement Plans, Custom Fiber Network Solutions and FiberSource Advisor Professional Services. http://www.tmcnet.com/tmc/videos/default.aspx?vid=1243

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Credit Suisse, NSX, Currenex Describe Low Latency Projects

Thursday, July 23rd, 2009

From Wall Street and Technology:

At a well-attended low-latency trading event today at Credit Suisse’s Flatiron district office, hosted by 29West, Wall Street executives noted that their focus on lowering data latency in their trading environments has not softened, despite the economic climate, and shared some of their latest efforts to reduce latency further.

For Credit Suisse, and especially for its CrossFinder dark pool, “Latency is our differentiator,” says Alex Roitgarts, director at the firm and the person responsible for latency. “Latency is a barrier to trading strategies. As a result, the key differentiator is how fast you can process and how much volume you can process. Logically, you don’t have to be zero latency, you just have to be faster than the other guy. Since you don’t know what the other guy is doing, you need to tune your operation like a Swiss watch every single day.” Even customers who don’t express any direct interest in latency are concerned about the performance of their trading algorithms. “The algo itself is becoming latency sensitive,” he says.

While two to three years ago latency was measured in the tens of milliseconds, today Credit Suisse’s round-trip trade order latency is within 300-350 microseconds. “I wouldn’t be surprised if within a few years people start measuring latency in nanoseconds,” Roitgarts says.

To reduce latency, the Swiss firm is installing new, faster network routers that will cause only three microseconds latency, versus 20 microseconds for the current technology. It closely monitors its trading applications by putting time stamps within trade messages and watching performance against certain thresholds. The firm doesn’t try to measure latency on every trade, though. “We try to take a top down, practical approach,” Roitgarts says. “If you try to measure latency on every signal that happens, the process of measurement may slow you down.” Instead Credit Suisse looks at logical check points. As soon as a lag is detected, “we immediately try to figure out why it happened,” he says. If nothing seems amiss with the application, the routers and network appliances are investigated.

At the National Stock Exchange, CIO Saro Jahani tries to take a holistic approach to latency. “We have to make sure that not only our matching engines, FIX engines and network are fast enough, good enough, and stable and controlled enough, we also have to make sure we have policies in place that help our clients to do smart colocations,” he says. “I have assigned a team of people within my organization to to make the system as low stress and low latency as possible.” Many times, customers’ latency is actually caused by their firewalls and workload balancers, he says.

Sean Gilman, CTO of foreign exchange ECN Currenex, points out that what his organization offers is a “fungible asset” — clients can trade wherever they want to. “When they come to us, they expect to get the price and market data first and to be able to hit that price first and faster than their competitors.” For instance, Currenex had a hedge fund client performing arbitrage based on trading models that frequently complained it was losing money because it was putting in orders that weren’t getting filled. “We found that another customer was hitting that same price, each time. The models are the same between these different hedge funds, but one was faster by one millisecond or a few microseconds. It doesn’t matter what the granularity is, you’re fastest or you lose. It really is a race.”

To keep up, Currenex upgrades its core servers every 16 months and its network every two years. The exchange also separates simple orders from complex ones, which are handled on a separate matching engine, allowing the common orders fast throughput.

For latency monitoring, Currenex finds SNMP [Simple Network Management Protocol] useful for basic devices such as routers and switches and boxes. “But the real problems tend not to be there,” Gilman notes. “That’s not usually the type of thing that bites us.” Instead, the forex venue focuses on applicational latencies between different services, storing statistics and charting trends to detect possible causes of latency, such as a code change.

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BATS Will Launch into Options Market

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

A year after becoming an equities exchange, BATS plans to grab a
chunk of the options market through aggressive pricing that appeals to
some of the same automated liquidity-providing firms that helped make
it the third-largest exchange operator in U.S. equities.

“Compared
to our competitors in this space, we’re lean, based on our direct
monthly expenses and capital outlay to get into options, so we’re
operating on a different scale than other exchanges,” said Joe
Ratterman, CEO of BATS Exchange. “Because of that, we can be
aggressively priced.”

BATS Options will have maker-taker
pricing in a price-time market model. The exchange hasn’t yet announced
its pricing, but will target all options classes, and not just those
quoted in penny increments, Ratterman said. He does not think the
exchange will offer different pricing for penny-quoted and
non-penny-quoted options, but noted that the final decision hasn’t yet
been made. In equities BATS has sometimes used inverted maker-taker
pricing to attract volume.

“If history is any guide, they’re
very aggressive with their pricing metrics, and will enter the options
space with a pricing structure that will undercut the competition and
will attract interest and competition from trading entities,” said Andy
Nybo, a principal at research firm TABB Group.

BATS’s
ambitions for options are aggressive. “We wouldn’t be going into this
market if there wasn’t a big opportunity for BATS to come in, make
improvements and gain market share,” Ratterman said. “U.S. equities was
one of the most competitive markets in the world and we managed to do
very well when we broke into that space. There’s nothing to keep us
from being successful in options.”

Ratterman expects BATS’s
eventual options market share to equal its share in equities. In June,
BATS accounted for 10.7 percent of equities volume. BATS, formerly an
ECN, opened for trading in January 2006 and became an exchange in
August 2008.

BATS intends to build its options market by
appealing to a range of investors, including institutions, retail
brokers and market-making firms. “We’ll attract as much diversity [of
flow] as possible,” Ratterman said. “We have a fair and open model in
the equities world and will have that in options.”

But the
exchange’s strong suit is its appeal to automated market makers. “The
performance metrics of our system have traditionally appealed to
automated market-making firms because of the low-risk characteristics
of their trading on our markets, and the consistency and performance of
our system,” Ratterman said. “It’s likely we’ll have as much influence
on the options side.”

TABB’s Nybo notes that BATS’s reputation
for having a strong technology platform and low-latency infrastructure
will boost its prospects in options. “They are looking to attract
quantitative trading firms using low-latency, high-frequency strategies
and those that arbitrage fleeting price discrepancies,” he said.

BATS
will file the rule set for its new market “shortly,” according to
Ratterman. He said the launch of BATS Options is targeted for January
or February of next year, subject to approval by the Securities and
Exchange Commission.

BATS Options will join a growing
marketplace populated by seven options exchanges. Last month, 296
million equity options contracts changed hands, up 5.6 percent over the
previous June’s volume. The industry traded a record 3.3 billion equity
options contracts in 2008, an increase of 26.7 percent over 2007’s
record volume. This year is on pace to exceed last year’s volume.

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7.99ms Chicago to NJ Financial District

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

What 7.99ms how is that possible?? By utilizing optimal spans from available carriers CFN Services is able to create the lowest latency solution from 350 Cermak to 1400 Federal. Not only does this low latency exist, it is guaranteed. Limited Availability so inquire immediately. www.cfnservices.com/electronic_trading.asp

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