Time-Stamping and Latency Measurement

The search for a competitive edge has led to the deployment of [hopefully] lower latency networks by both bandwidth providers and trading houses. To remain competitive, and justify continued investment, it has become increasingly important to measure the performance of these low latency infrastructures; if performance cannot be measured, then improvements cannot be made.

For nearly 10 years, Endace has developed and perfected its time-stamping and latency-measurement products. Coupled with built-in support for high precision time sources (such as GPS, CDMA and IEEE1588/PTP), Endace DAG® cards use FPGAs to stamp every captured packet with nanosecond resolution. These techniques form the foundation of latency measurement solutions that circumvent the inaccuracies of NTP (network transport protocol) and serve as platforms on which our partners have built the most intuitive latency monitoring toolsets. These solutions can passively monitor delays at any point, from exchange to execution, without adding any latency to the traffic itself.

Endace has now established itself as the leading vendor of time-stamping technology for many of the major financial services networks. Our complete solutions ensure that measurement isn’t used solely to improve network performance but also to assist with regulatory compliance mandates for Reg NMS and MiFID.