London Exchange Achieves 30 Microsecond Round-Trip Time
January 27, 2012
The London Stock Exchange Group said it had achieved 30-microsecond round-trip times for cross connection between a client cabinet and the trading system inside its primary data center in the City of London.
The exchange also has achieved a sub-100 microsecond round trip time, between that data center in the City of London and a secondary center offering co-location services in Wapping.
Wapping is approximately three miles down the Thames River from the City of London.
LSE primary data center.
The 100-microsecond time is the round trip time for accessing the exchange’s trading system at its primary data center in the City of London, from a Colt Technology Services Group data center in Wapping.
That does not include the 30 microseconds of cross-connection latency, between a client cabinet and the trading system that occurs within the London Stock Exchange’s primary data center.
The matching enginge itself takes 120 microseconds to process the trade and send back out trade details.
The LSE’s matching engine, based on Millennium IT technology, is located at the primary data center. The LSE acquired Millennium IT at the end of 2009 and migrated to its matching engine last year.
Time inside the primary data center also has been cut. The cross-connect latency within the primary data center used to be approximately, 100 microseconds.
The exchange said the latency was reduced by using 10 Gigabit connections and improvements made to the network infrastructure.
Traders wanting fastest trip times locate at the primary data center in the City of London, where round trip times are 30 microseconds, the exchange said.
“Where clients are latency sensitive but do not necessarily require the fastest connectivity, but wish to utilize a fully managed solution, then this is where the proximity hosting solution operated by Colt is of benefit,’’ the exchange told Securities Technology Monitor.
The round trip time inside the New York Stock Exchange's Mahwah, N.J., data center when it opened in 2010 was 50 microseconds.
NYSE Euronext has a mirror data center at Basildon, England, near London. That center has the same technology and speed.
