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Gordon Henderson wrote: > > Aparently the big financial bods care - they're talking about sub > millisecond transactions exactly timed to try to get the edge on share > trading... I think they probably need a reality check. All the big stock markets are pushing or already have sub-millisecond precision in trade monitoring, the idea I think being you system can spot an opportunity first it can trade first and make more money. But this kind of depends on your systems being within 200 miles of the market, which might be true if you trade in London from within London and the cables are short. But you get "monitoring data that is 'sub-millisecond'" on global data feeds -- urm guys if it is global it is already many milliseconds old. Sure I can see that not adding unneeded delays may be useful, but I fear that "sub-millisecond" has become a buzz-word or marketing phrase in the finance world (and I remember when it was just the world of IP routers that was desperate to go sub-millisecond). Stock trading is a market, you can only make trades as fast as the second fastest trader at best. I know there are people who need precise time - the Met Office use to detect lightening location by essentially listening to static on the radio from several places and triangulating - for which you want sub-millisecond accuracy since the triangulation is based on speed of light which we all know is 1 foot per nanosecond (close enough), so 1000 feet per microsecond, or 1,000,000 feet per millisecond, and a million feet is a big error, but 1000 feet is generally acceptable for most purposes to do with lightening. Originally they solved this issue by buying atomic clocks, I'm guessing they still use them, although GPS clocks would probably do the trick as well these days. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq