Could this have anything to do with it? The needs of the financial industry are huge.
Sm@rtCasting Sends Financial Feeds via IP
Multicast
Business Wire - June 23, 1998 16:26
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 23, 1998--Today at the '98 SIA Technology Management Conference, Simpact Inc. announced a breakthrough networking technology that allows financial market feeds to be distributed on IP multicast networks.
Traditionally, market feeds have been transmitted via point-to-point leased lines and have been unable to take advantage of low-cost IP multicasting. Simpact's Sm@rtCasting software uses protocol translation to overcome the incompatibility between market feeds and multicasting. Leased lines can be dropped in favor of multicast distribution, while the legacy equipment used to transmit the market feeds remains in place. Sm@rtCasting software runs on Simpact's Sm@rtRouters, a family of intelligent, enterprise-level routers.
"We've designed a simple, economical migration path that allows financial data services to upgrade to IP multicasting without the need to replace any of their existing legacy equipment," said Tom Stockey, Simpact's vice president of sales.
"Multicasting is particularly attractive to financial data providers since they are in the business of sending information from a single source to many receivers. However, because their legacy protocols are not capable of multicasting, they've been locked into using leased lines -- a costly configuration. Now, by simply installing a Sm@rtRouter running our Sm@rtCasting software, a legacy financial feed can be sent over an IP multicast network. It can then be received by any multicast-ready device. Alternatively, it can be received by another Sm@rtRouter which translates the multicast transmission back into a legacy protocol so it can be received by an existing legacy device."
Sm@rtRouters hosting Sm@rtCasting software can handle up to 24 serial ports of financial market feeds. A 128 port model will be available soon. High-performance, intelligent communications processors manage the serial ports and a powerful CPU performs routing and protocol translation. To ensure high-data throughput and quality of service, Sm@rtRouters employ Wind River Systems' VxWorks, an open, real-time operating system. The integral industry standard router includes a firewall, SNMP support, and a user-friendly GUI for configuration. |
