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Non-Tech : Trading with Castle Online -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul darby who wrote (90)	3/29/1998 7:38:00 PM
From: Street Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186

AB WATLEY connection ROUTER...is Castle also gearing up? From a returned letter to Irby, a customer at AB Watley: Thank you for the kind words. On connection issues it would be very easy to blame the stability of the internet, and indeed there is some basis to say that the internet itself, still in it's infancy, is fragile. With this level of technology there is no one simple answer. Although A.B.Watley is by far the most intergrated of all the trading vehicles available, and with the most experience, we do still have to rely on vendors. (A cause for much lost sleep)! It is easy to say, but something that I feel very comfortable in conveying to you, is that our inhouse systems are the strongest link in the chain.(Indeed the industry). How do we address our weak links then? As far as the Internet goes it has been a problem that using limited backbone providers means as a Company we are at their mercy. To counteract this we have recently purchased, at enormous expense, a new type of router so that should one provider go down, all clients effected will automatically be re-routed to the next most efficient connection, involving all of the available providers. To all intents and purposes this will end backbone problems. This is currently in the final stages of testing and will be in force during the next few weeks. We do not feel that any problem is insurmountable and are reinvesting every penny of revenues to ensure that UltimateTrader maintains it's market leader status. Vendors are somewhat more of a tricky issue in that we cannot go around them, but constantly have to work on co-operation. Other than doing everything ourselves we must rely on the ability and commitment of software developers and data providers to the same high standards that we set ourselves. (Not an easy task!) As time goes by technology will get cheaper allowing stronger types of connection such as the DPS to be more affordable to a greater number of people. Data fees will come down, as will commissions due to normal economic pressures and economies of scale. All in all Irby, the most I can say to you is that in time every firm competing in this field will have approximately the same product. It will all come down to the Company. To service, support and commitment. We are lucky to be the leaders at this time but are by no means complacent. We look forward to all our client input and I hope this helps a little to answer your question. Sincerely, Jonathan