Network Delays Cost Stock Trading Firms Millions
A cheap solution has been discovered by computer programmers for detecting millionth of a second delays in routers in data center networks. Automatic stock trading systems with even a millionth of a second delay can cost over a million dollars.
The work was presented on August 20th, 2009 at SIGCOMM. The computer programming method was created by a joint task collaboration between the University of California and Purdue University computer programmers.
A delay as short as a millionth of a second can be detected in a router. Even packet loss as rare as one packet in 10 million can be detected with this programming code. This code can run on any router and does not slow the router down.
The programming code is called the Lossy Difference Aggregator. It requires no new hardware and has no performance penalty on the router.
Big brokerage houses will be very interested in this technology. If an institutional investor has a stock trading algorithm that reacts to incoming market data just 100 microseconds earlier than the competition, it can buy millions of shares and push the price of a stock higher before the competition has time to react.
Online automated exchanges like the American Stock Exchange use custom designed hardware boxes that are very expensive. These boxes are put on routers and key points in a data center network. These external hardware boxes are too expensive to put on every router within a data center network making it difficult to trouble shoot and find a problem router. By the time the problem is detected and fixed, it will cost the company anywhere from 2 to 4 million dollars because of delayed buy and sell orders.
This computer programming code will allow router vendors to add loss tracking on every router at no additional cost. This will completely eliminate the need for specialized external router monitoring devices.
The way router performance is monitored now is by expensive external hardware that tracks when a packet enters the router and when it exists the router and then takes the difference of those times.
Instead of tracking the entry and exit times of all packets going through a router, this computer code randomly divides the incoming packets into groups and then calculates the entry and exit times of each group. As long as the number of losses is smaller than the number of groups, at least one group will give a good estimate.
Subtracting the sums of the groups and then dividing by the number of messages gives an approximation of the average delay with very little performance reduction of the router. It has about the same overhead as a series of small counters.
With this computer programming code built into every router, a data center manager will be able to quickly pinpoint the offending router and interface that is adding extra millionth of a second delays or losing even one packet in a million. - 23212
The work was presented on August 20th, 2009 at SIGCOMM. The computer programming method was created by a joint task collaboration between the University of California and Purdue University computer programmers.
A delay as short as a millionth of a second can be detected in a router. Even packet loss as rare as one packet in 10 million can be detected with this programming code. This code can run on any router and does not slow the router down.
The programming code is called the Lossy Difference Aggregator. It requires no new hardware and has no performance penalty on the router.
Big brokerage houses will be very interested in this technology. If an institutional investor has a stock trading algorithm that reacts to incoming market data just 100 microseconds earlier than the competition, it can buy millions of shares and push the price of a stock higher before the competition has time to react.
Online automated exchanges like the American Stock Exchange use custom designed hardware boxes that are very expensive. These boxes are put on routers and key points in a data center network. These external hardware boxes are too expensive to put on every router within a data center network making it difficult to trouble shoot and find a problem router. By the time the problem is detected and fixed, it will cost the company anywhere from 2 to 4 million dollars because of delayed buy and sell orders.
This computer programming code will allow router vendors to add loss tracking on every router at no additional cost. This will completely eliminate the need for specialized external router monitoring devices.
The way router performance is monitored now is by expensive external hardware that tracks when a packet enters the router and when it exists the router and then takes the difference of those times.
Instead of tracking the entry and exit times of all packets going through a router, this computer code randomly divides the incoming packets into groups and then calculates the entry and exit times of each group. As long as the number of losses is smaller than the number of groups, at least one group will give a good estimate.
Subtracting the sums of the groups and then dividing by the number of messages gives an approximation of the average delay with very little performance reduction of the router. It has about the same overhead as a series of small counters.
With this computer programming code built into every router, a data center manager will be able to quickly pinpoint the offending router and interface that is adding extra millionth of a second delays or losing even one packet in a million. - 23212
About the Author:
By Lance Jepsen. For free stock trading advice by master stock traders and free stock charting software go to stock trading
posted by X - Men @ 3:44 AM
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