White Paper Abstract: Monitoring Real-Time Stock Trading Networks with the nGenius Solution

Detecting and troubleshooting microbursts, latency and out-of-sequence packets for latency-sensitive market data and trade/exchange applications and protocols.

In the highly competitive investment services industry, differentiation can often be measured in milliseconds. The firms that can process and analyze the ever-growing volumes of market and trade data the fastest can execute trades more swiftly and pass this advantage on to their customers. In fact, according to InformationWeek, “a millisecond advantage in trading applications can be worth $100 million a year to a major brokerage firm.”* The ability to identify and monitor microbursts, latency and packet loss for critical market data and trade/exchange applications and the protocols associated with them, such as FIX, IP Multicast, TIBCO and others, is essential to the day-to-day operation of financial exchanges, trading houses, hedge funds, investment banks and other global financial institutions and market exchanges with trading desks.

Algorithmic trading is driving firms to re-architect their trading systems and networks for low latency and optimal performance. Firms are automating trade processes and adding throughput and processing power to their market data and trading systems. Market data delayed by tens of milliseconds may no longer be usable for trading purposes, so designing the network to minimize latency is also essential.

In addition, these networks also support 24x7 access for customers checking account balances, current stock prices, validating orders that have been executed or for brokers and traders viewing their clients' investment and trading history or researching investment alternatives. This increased dependency on the network has brought many IT departments additional responsibilities and formidable challenges in managing, maintaining, and optimizing the performance of their valuable, global networks.

NetScout applies its high-definition CDM technology to identify and monitor application traffic flows, mapping them to the powerful real-time and historical views and reports available in nGenius® Performance Manager. This approach enables nGenius Application Fabric Monitors (AFMon) and nGenius Probes, when strategically placed throughout the organization's network, to collect and deliver rich, actionable information on the utilization and conversations from market trading-specific application traffic. Network professionals can then proactively manage faults, monitor application responsiveness, plan network bandwidth changes, and rapidly troubleshoot problems.

*“Wall Street's Quest to Process Data at the Speed of Light,” Information Week, April 23, 2007.

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