Leveraging the power of the EndaceProbe™ packet capture and analysis platform, the service is specifically designed to meet the exacting demands of high-frequency traders and the service provider community that connects them to trading venues all over the world.

"Modern high-frequency trading demands constant and precise monitoring of network latency, since a slowdown or interruption can mean significant financial loss," said Kevin Formby, vice president of business development at Endace. "Historically, measuring network latency has been the domain of network engineers and was haphazard at best. The real focus of network latency measurement should be on the business applications that need microsecond-accurate knowledge of latency to operate optimally. With this new service from Endace, organisations receive the data that they need delivered as a real-time data feed that can easily be integrated into real-time trading environments."

Last week, Endace customer Spread Networks launched real-time measurements of its low-latency wave service—which offers one and 10 gigabit waves connecting Chicago and New York—on its website (www.spreadnetworks.com). Latency measurements are provided using Endace's monitoring services and are used by Spread Networks to prove to its customers that it is delivering against its 15.75 millisecond round-trip SLA.

Brennan Carley, senior vice president of marketing at Spread Networks said, "Spread Networks built a brand new network to provide customers with ultra-low latency connectivity between America's two largest financial centres and we're committed to providing our customers the utmost in speed, diversity and reliability. By working with Endace we're also able to deliver a hitherto unknown level of transparency into the performance of our service. The success of our business is based on meeting a pre-defined SLA and we couldn't think of a better way of proving the point than publishing the results on our website for all to see."

Endace's service deploys EndaceProbes at either end of the network links being monitored. The timing clocks on the EndaceProbes are synchronised using highly accurate GPS signals, enabling Endace to calculate network latency to a very high degree of accuracy. Endace owns and manages all of the network equipment. The service is targeted at both service providers, who have a growing need to understand and report to their customers on network latency, and high-frequency trading firms that want to understand full end-to-end latency for their specific network configurations.