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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frank A. Coluccio who wrote (34713)	7/31/2010 11:13:59 PM
From: aladin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Frank, I thought I covered this in my response to ftth, but here goes: I can see where a one-size-fits-all 'best practices' cult might have an influence here, but doesn't equalizing all cable lengths play adversely to the sum effect of all latencies, given the familiar delay skew dynamic of slowing down all links in order to be as slow as the slowest one? Are you suggesting that time-varying delay and jitter are attributable to different cable lengths? I hardly think so, but just wondering. Having the cable lengths the same has nothing to do with optimization - its about fairness. If one user has a 10 ft cable to the distribution switch from the exchange and another is at the 100m limit - there is a measurable difference (however small) in the latency - just from that cable. Is this material? Exactly as you suggest - only if all other factors at play were equal. The delay from the exchange switch, in your switches and servers, through the applications and back out will play a much larger role - but everything is being looked at through a microscope here. Being one tick cycle ahead of the next guy (or server actually) is what its all about. The hardware vendors (network or server) are played against each other to get the best results, but ultimately - cost is not an issue - big premiums will be payed for speed. At a technology level the feeds are getting big enough and the traffic is volatile enough that market data is not just large - it also is bursty. The big phenomena being looked at today is the micro-burst issue - where very short duration peaks occur that can cause packet drops on network and server hardware. All the vendors are fighting about whose is better. John