Bombay Stock Exchange targets HFTs with network revamp
The BSE is opening up to HFT
India’s Bombay Stock Exchange has ramped up its network application and monitoring speeds and opened a new investor service centre in New Delhi, as it seeks to attract latency-sensitive traders.
The exchange decided to revamp its customer gateways and its core network with 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet software and hardware provided by specialist firm Solarflare. The BSE chose OpenOnload application acceleration, a form of middleware that is designed to improve network latency, bandwidth and message rates. It also installed Precision Time Synchronisation, which is a kind of server adaptor that increases the accuracy of time keeping to microseconds.
These changes essentially focus on speed – a factor that is vital for sophisticated market participants such as high-frequency traders. Exchanges around the world have focused on increasing their capacity and reducing latency partly in a bid to attract HFTs, which drive up trading volumes in the markets they enter.
The BSE and Solarflare are planning to hold a series of workshops together with Arista Networks highlighting the advantages of ultra-low latency infrastructure. The companies say they will reveal low latency best practices and the importance of increased network visibility and monitoring through best-in-class packet capture and hardware time stamping.
“We at BSE are quite proud of the level of service we offer the more than 5,000 companies listed on BSE,” said Kersi Tavadia, chief information officer at the BSE. “After a thorough evaluation of several options to upgrade our network, it became clear that Solarflare’s intelligent network I/O platform offered the best solution to meet or exceed our aggressive performance targets.”
