TIL: a fight for line of sight rights
Mar. 8th, 2019 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timeletsHigh-frequency trading drives an arms race in transmission technology and real estate around trading centers:
...[in 2010] a startup called Spread Networks dug through mountains and tore up parking lots to lay what became the straightest fiber-optic line between trading centers in New Jersey and Chicago, because the more direct the line, the faster data zipped through it. ... the data line moved information at about two-thirds the speed of light.
... [in about 2014] Spread’s technology was essentially obsolete for trading, overtaken by microwave radio transmissions, which can carry data through the air at about 99 percent the speed of light.
Microwave networks rely on line-of-sight transmissions—a microwave dish has to be able to see the dish it’s communicating with. The Earth’s curvature forces traders to relay their signals from towers that are typically spaced every few dozen miles.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-08/the-gazillion-dollar-standoff-over-two-high-frequency-trading-towers
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