Re: high frequency trading

I agree with you all. I work for a financial services company and for past
two years, been particularly focused on this area of our trading networks.
Without delving too much into employer's Low Latency strategy, all I'll
mention, is that we've done a ton of lab and benchmark testing on both the
applicaition and device specifics for our high frequency low latency
trading.

From an pure device and architecture standpoint, Cisco is still far behind.
Expecially on the 10Gb arena. Sure the Nexus5K have port density, but it
comes with a latency penalty that other vendors in the cut through switching
space don't have. But what Cisco brings to the table works
for environments where the data feeds are fanned out or aggregated with
possible congestion or head of line blocking. Of course you can't leave out
all of us and most network engineers are perfected on the IOS and NexOS
command set. But that advantage is slowly being matched by other cut through
vendors such as Blade and Arista who have OS command sets that are very
Cisco IOS like. Then when you add support, hands down Cisco dwarfs the
competition. And finally, we found that on the 1GE space, other Cisco
products (Catalyst 4900M, Catalyst 4948) are still very competitive with the
other vendors. So while Cisco is behind (even their product manager admitted
to us that the Nexus Platform does perform less than other broadcom chipset
switches such as Arista and Blade), they focused on what it can do, which is
provide a rich forwarding plan that is great with oversubscription and
buffering.

In short, it depends on your design and Co-Location requirements. We found a
mix bag or point solutions work out the best (All depends on your design).

Finally, Infiniband (IB) is a valid extremenly low latency alternative to
10Gb Ethernet. Much more robust, with baseline double data rates at 20Gbs
and Quad Data rate support (not mainstream) at 40Gbs. Speeds and latency
levels Ethernet is no where close to now. But IB definatley needs alot of
technical investment and expertise prior to deployment. Also to really take
advantage of this, you would need your market data architecture (for
Financial services companies) or backend services to support it. Its worth
looking into if you have the money, time and expertise. Be advised, Cisco
got out of the IB space about a year ago. So if you talk to them, be
prepared to hear the Ethernet with DCB/DCE speech instead.

For old heads like me and others out there, the IB vs Ethernet race reminds
me alot like the old school Ethernet vs Token Ring fight. Ethernet won, and
I think eventually they will win again. IB like Token Ring is a great
technology, but its difficulty to deploy, support and manage. In my opinion,
it will eventually lose to Ethernets massive wide scale entrenched
deployment.

On Sat, Feb 13, 2010 at 10:52 AM, Nahskur Udniraht <
expertinternetwork_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> Agree 100%.
>
> specially BN G8100 ...
>
> Few Tier-1 Exchanges will go live in next couple of months with ...
> Mellanox for Infiniband
> BladeNetworks for 10G
> C6500 for 1G
>
> seems to be cisco is still far behind in HPC/DC networking ...
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Joseph L. Brunner
> <joe_at_affirmedsystems.com>wrote:
>
> > Actually,
> >
> > I spent quite a few months on this recently for some Algo Traders in
> > Equinix CH1.
> >
> > We dismissed all Cisco products summarily as having TOO HIGH fabric
> > latency;
> >
> > We went with Blade Networks with Arista as a close second. Both exhibited
> > the LOWEST possible latency.
> > Blade won on better features, and more mature operating system.
> >
> > -Joe
> > #19366
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of
> > Anthony Bonilla
> > Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 10:23 PM
> > To: ccielab_at_groupstudy.com
> > Subject: OT: high frequency trading
> >
> > Hi all, I am back again. Have a question regarding high frequency
> trading.
> > We are planning on collocating at an exchange for trading and are looking
> > for doing lowest latency possible. I wanted to see if anyone else is
> doing
> > this and if there are any recommendations. I am currently thinking about
> > 4900M and nexus 5k (layer 2) but am interested in seeing what others have
> > done and whether there are any best practices from cisco to ensure that
> we
> > achive lowest latency. TIA.
> >
> >
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> >
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> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Nahskur Udniraht
> expertinetwork.blogspot.com
>
>
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Received on Sat Feb 13 2010 - 12:01:36 ART