This summer’s surprise fiber build Spread Networks unveiled a low latency Ethernet wave service between New York and Chicago yesterday. At just 15.75ms, the offering is easily the lowest commercially available wavelength in the game right now, but doesn’t yet bring things down to the 13.33ms range that had been highlighted over the summer. Still, it’s probably a full millisecond faster than competing routes from Level 3, Intellifiber, and others.
This particular route actually terminates at the NASDAQ facility in Carteret over in New Jersey, about 20 miles from the main Manhattan locations. Spread Networks actually trenched a brand new fiber route to Chicago specifically for the financial vertical, which tells you just how much money is out behind high frequency trading. At about 825 miles, it cut more than 100 miles off of existing longhaul routes, but I can’t help but wonder just what it cost to optimize for distance at the expense of, say, rights of way.
Until recently, this was the only route on which there was enough interest to drive such a project. But now perhaps we can add Hibernia Atlantic’s proposed new transatlantic cable route to that list, as they are clearly counting on a similar top dog status when it comes to latency on the NYC-London route. Perhaps soon to follow will be a new build on the London-Frankfurt route?
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Categories: Fiber optic cable · Low Latency
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13.33 is for dark services, this is lit.
The information in this article is not correct. I know for a fact the services on this route are nowhere 15.75ms. They are even below the advertised 13.33ms. The article is either written with a bit of bias, or the author got some bad info.
You’ll find the source material on Spread’s own site: http://spreadnetworks.com/press-room/press-releases-and-media – perhaps this particular offering is not comparable to the one where you are seeing such speeds? Actually, if you come here regularly you’ll find that I’m not against Spread at all. I’m actually quite amazed that they trenched a new route, and there’s nothing I like more than new fiber builds. Always looking for more details though.
how can dark services have latency??
heard there was arial in their route, and that would be a cost(or gamble) to optimize for distance…
Your comment inspires a question for the fiber mavens among us. I’ve been involved with specking some high visibility routes over the past decade or two (from the standpoint of criticality) for enterprise dark fiber networks, only to learn during the final stages of negotiations with the provider that the client opted to remain on aerial spans despite the presumed risks involved (which is a subject for another thread itself).
So the question is, what percentage of the fiber routes in North American (industry-wide) would you say, roughly, are underground vs. aerial for each of the three categories listed below, assuming that HFTs are treated any differently?
MANs:
WANs:
HFT:
For anyone feeling uber-zealous about this: Of those underground, the ratio of buried-direct vs. conduit-placed.
TIA,
Frank
——
… or if you prefer to opine offline, my address is frank@fttx.org
thanks.