Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery • Hacker News Board

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#91

Post by slr555 » Wed, May 09, 2018, 7:49 PM UTC

As a Ham I am certainly intrigued by this posting.

There are a number of obstacles I can see to effectively using shortwave for financial services. Propagation conditions vary by time of day, solar activity and other exogenous factors. Another post hypothesized a 100 Kw transmitter power but even without running the numbers it seems like the FCCs Maximum Permissible Exposure Limits (MPE) would dictate a larger exclusion zone than the author encountered, however proper antenna modeling would be needed to be completely accurate. Another confounding factor to potential efficacy of the site is the surrounding terrain. The photos show nearby structures and trees which are less conducive to effective take off angles and propagation associated with the Yagi type antennas depicted. Most hardcore Ham sites with big towers have well groomed earth (or even better, water) around them. Additionally, the data would obviously have be encrypted and transmitted with extremely robust error correction.

It would be fun to grab a couple of boxes from AOR and see what is coming off those antennas.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#92

Post by cjsawyer » Wed, May 09, 2018, 8:17 PM UTC

discussedbefore wrote: post #45

The secret world of microwave networks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12862789 (2016) HFT in My Backyard https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8354278 (2014)

A microwave radio setup to the nearest populated area gave my rural-living parents modern internet a few years ago. It’s not the same scale but the same idea! It’s far and away better than satellite.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#93

Post by Ftuuky » Wed, May 09, 2018, 10:00 PM UTC

yangcanvas wrote: post #76

social_quotient wrote: post #27

If this article was an intro to a fiction novel, I’d be interested in reading the entire thing. Some sort of HFT heist with a good mix of factual engineering and finance.

Rougue Code by Mark Russinovich was a novel I enjoyed about a HFT heist.

Can I read it without reading the first two books?

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#94

Post by aoki » Wed, May 09, 2018, 11:24 PM UTC

a meta-comment:

it's weird - i submitted this a couple of days ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17018883), but it still doesn't show up in the default HN search view. (we even edited the blog headline the same way!) but it does show up in the "by date" view.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#95

Post by aoki » Wed, May 09, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

discussedbefore wrote: post #45

The secret world of microwave networks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12862789 (2016) HFT in My Backyard https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8354278 (2014)

i am not sure i would agree that this has been discussed before. this is not simply about use of RF (microwave, mmwave) for HFT. as i understand it, that kind of thing typically involves COTS radios and conventional dish antennas.

this instance appears to involve longer-range links and SDRs (in this case, the ettus USRPs).

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#96

Post by nickynickell » Thu, May 10, 2018, 1:29 AM UTC

vasilipupkin wrote: post #79

FearNotDaniel wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short answer: because this is Hacker News, not Middle Manager In A Large Organization Serving A Well Established Market News. The author went to the effort simply because he himself found it interesting. He published it on a hunch that at least a few other people would find it as interesting as he did, even if they are not working in that industry, just because technology is interesting in its own right. He was right…

that's obviously a tautological answer. I am saying, he is doing a lot of work, if he redirected this work towards something more relevant to more people, he would produce more results for himself and for everyone else.

Why does it need to be relevant for more people?

It looks as if you're treating it as a means to an end. I would say that it was more of an end in itself. Sure, something else might have been more impactful to a larger number of people, but having an impact isn't the point.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#97

Post by ropeadopepope » Thu, May 10, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

alexpil wrote: post #72

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'm still around and in the industry. Never promised the lowest latency, but I was the first one by two years to build NY Chicago.

Thank you for replying! I'm glad to hear you're still around. I was always impressed with your work.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#98

Post by cameldrv » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:05 AM UTC

slr555 wrote: post #91

As a Ham I am certainly intrigued by this posting. There are a number of obstacles I can see to effectively using shortwave for financial services. Propagation conditions vary by time of day, solar activity and other exogenous factors. Another post hypothesized a 100 Kw transmitter power but even without running the numbers it seems like the FCCs Maximum Permissible Exposure Limits (MPE) would dictate a larger exclus…

From the McKay brothers' website: "It's better to be fast 99% of the time than slow 99.999% of the time" - Bob Meade and Stéphane Tyč, Co-Founders

If your trading strategy is simply arbitraging Chicago/London, it's probably ok if your link is even 50% reliable, if for that 50% of the time, it's significantly faster than your competition's data. London is going to get the information 10ms later anyhow, so if a packet drops, you can still execute the offsetting transaction, just at the same time as everyone else.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#99

Post by bobvan13 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:31 AM UTC

aoki wrote: post #95

discussedbefore wrote: post #45

The secret world of microwave networks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12862789 (2016) HFT in My Backyard https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8354278 (2014)

i am not sure i would agree that this has been discussed before. this is not simply about use of RF (microwave, mmwave) for HFT. as i understand it, that kind of thing typically involves COTS radios and conventional dish antennas. this instance appears to involve longer-range links and SDRs (in this case, the ettus USRPs).

Yes, well said. I think you're making an important distinction. Shortwave is old technology, but combined with SDR, this is a novel application of it AFAIK.

Re: Shortwave Trading: The West Chicago Tower Mystery

#100

Post by bobvan13 » Thu, May 10, 2018, 4:49 AM UTC

dx034 wrote: post #32

Jommi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like it is real: https://www.six-group.com/en/home/media/releases/2018/201805...

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…

Yes, it has to bounce, but the number of times it bounces is dictated by the takeoff angle, as is the path length of each bounce relative to ground traversed. You aim for takeoff angles around 12 degrees. Since cos(12 degrees) ~= 0.98, there's not much path length added by the bouncing. So you still end up WAY ahead of fiber. I'll detail a stacked-curtain, log-periodic antenna used at another Chicago-area site in a forthcoming post.