<Steve, I beleive that both fast and accurate Internet feeds are
possible. (Accuracy certainly isn't related to whether or not it is overthe Internet.) The main problems, I think, are projecting demand and building adequate server capacity, and providing a fast and reliable server connection - which means connection to multiple backbones. (Both for redundancy and to reduce the number of "hops" to the greatest number of customers.)>
Hi Jon-
I agree it is theoretically possible to have accurate and reliable internet quotes. My understanding is that, presuming a good quote feed, the reliability will come from the stability of the backbone and the accuracy will come from the speed of the backbone.
The stability requires not having packet loss - from time-outs, request time-outs or excessive ping times which cause packet loss. The speed is also dependant on having short ping times with fewer "hops".
If you happen to live near the feed backbone, you likely will be getting pretty accurate / reliable quotes. I live in southern California, and have demoed PCQuote internet (whose servers are in Chicago) and often would be several minutes behind my 19.2 feed, which itself could be 10+ minutes behind the market. Othertimes, as you have pointed out, the system hangs when a conection is unstable - maybe 2-5 times an hour.
I am using a 266 w/128MB and have used 4 different internet providers, including MCI (which owns 51% of the net's backbone) and none of them are much different from any other in delivering better quote info. PCQuote uses alternet (ie., Uunet, which according to PCQ - sucks) and has PSINet as a backup, which also doesn't seem to work well with them.
Whereas I agree that PCQ's feed is considered one of the best out there, I disagree (from experience) that real time quotes are feasible TODAY on the internet - that is, IF you live on the west coast. I spoke with Townsend (source of your Intersat) and they confirmed that it is highly likely this would be the case from any of the 3 feeds that send to their RealTick software (the 3rd being S&P Comstock). I tried trace routing to Intersat and S&P's DNS, and got the same kind of laggy ping times and time-outs.
As an aside, as you know, Intersat does not offer level II. And no internet feeds offer full Dow news.
Thanks for the heads up on Signal/DBC. Anyone have experience with BMI or any other feeds, satellite or cable?
Thanks Jon-
Steve |
