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Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

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Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#51

Post by nimbius »

Could it possibly be bulk data from sensors?

I worked on a project in several states for IBM that handled traffic shaping and detection on highways and onramps. This system was used to identify gridlock and adjust lights at offramps or give people an ETA until theyre downtown. Most adjacent cities were staunchly NIMBY and didnt care to have the state government trenching cable to and fro for traffic control, so the data ended up hopping from town to town on microwave subcontracted from the cellular company that handled the large electric billboards on the highway.

the benefit of this was also the ability to route signal control data to large intersections without having to shut them down to dig cable trenches from the IBM network.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#52

Post by dx034 »

jhpankow wrote: post #43
dx034 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is microwave based. Those lines are well known by now and there are known routes within Europe (most notable Frankfurt London) and the US (NYC Chicago). However, microwave only works over short distances (FRA LON has multiple towers to cover the distance). Crossing the atlantic isn't possible. Shortwave could deliver a similar speedup over long distances. I'm a bit sceptical though. Don't the waves have to bounc…

I'd suspect the latency improvement is control over the entire path and not specifically about the propagation speed/delay. Getting your data across a long haul undersea fiber requires aggregating it with everyone else's data at a central point before it gets sent out optically. This adds latency. Even with the propagation variability of the wireless path you might be saving hundreds of nanoseconds.

I doubt that this is a major factor. The extra delay (light speed vs. fibre speed) for signals across the Atlantic is at least 10ms each way, a few hundred nanoseconds for aggregation shouldn't make a difference there.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#53

Post by ropeadopepope »

sniperinmahwah wrote: post #50
ropeadopepope wrote: post #49

Does anybody know what happened to Windy Apple Technologies? They promised the lowest latency microwave connection from NY to Chicago, then promptly disappeared...

I know

Are you willing to say here, or is there another way I can contact you?

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#56

Post by wglb »

avip wrote: post #39
Jommi wrote: post #19

Weirdest thing I've read in a long while. The Author's comments refer to an internet forum thread[0] in German which discusses a German news article from this April.[1]However, it turns out this article is an April Fools text. Just digging deeper into the whole blog you can find something that can only be described as a fanfiction representation of "Flashboys", but in the context of this "Shortwave trading".[2] Is th…

Long-time "sniper in mahwah" follower here. The author is without the slightest doubt an elite tech reporter with in-depth understanding of RF tech. He always provides an overwhelming body of evidence to back his writing.

But why not then listen and figure out what frequencies are being used? That skill would be well within the "elite" category, no?

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#58

Post by jlgaddis »

I'm not even remotely involved with the HFT world, but I can't think of any good reason why they'd want to receive "shortwave" signals from Europe in Chicago.

Short-haul microwave links for low latency and high bandwidth, yes, but at shortwave frequencies you are literally talking about BITS per second. TFA says "Think dialup speeds" but this is lower than even dialup!

They certainly aren't receiving any meaningful amount of data (which I presume you need for HFT) with that shortwave receiver.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#59

Post by jlgaddis »

nimbius wrote: post #51

Could it possibly be bulk data from sensors? I worked on a project in several states for IBM that handled traffic shaping and detection on highways and onramps. This system was used to identify gridlock and adjust lights at offramps or give people an ETA until theyre downtown. Most adjacent cities were staunchly NIMBY and didnt care to have the state government trenching cable to and fro for traffic control, so the d…

Not at the frequencies that those LP antennas are tuned for.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#60

Post by lallysingh »

golergka wrote: post #37
lallysingh wrote: post #8

"Garden Leave" is a paid non-compete time (often a year) used in the financial industry when someone switched jobs. The prior employer invokes it at their option.

I wasn't aware that "paid non-compete" is a thing, thanks for clarifying it. Next time when I see a non-compete in a contract (which is usual for developers), instead of negotiating it out, I'll try to negotiate something like this. What do these agreements usually look like?

The employer has the option to pay you your salary (not bonus, which is a big part of your income!) to not work at all instead of you going to a competitor.

I think that the comp part is necessary to make it enforceable at all.

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