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Non-Tech : CYBERTRADER -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Philip R Berber who wrote (491)	5/9/1998 1:30:00 AM
From: Ilya k.	Respond to of 3216

I'm no expert on telecomms but I'm somewhat puzzled by your 80 mph toll road analogy for frame relay (FR). I'm with a competitor of Cyber. (BTW it looks like you have a great product. Am looking forward to discussion of v1.6.) My provider has regular internet and FR access. I drive 4 21" monitors on my primary trading system, a 166, 64MB RAM. In discussing pros/cons of FR vs Net connections with my broker, I happened to ask their maximum data rate regardless of access method. The fastest data rate was only 50% of my dial-up modem capability. The only plus for FR was its connection reliability. Using your analogy, at best my broker gives me a 20 mph bike to ride the 80 mph FR toll road. Yes, the ride may be smoother, but it certainly isn't faster than the cobblestone path with the nude photos on display. I'm fortunate to have a fractional T-1 with a back-up dial-up modem on the above system. I have a similar capability on my fully redundant 333, 128 MB RAM system. On my redundant system I subscribe to Track Online for back-up data capabilites -- so I never go blind when my broker's system, my ISP or some backbone goes down, as they all do from time to time. Yes, momentary panic sets in when I wake up to the realization that all is not well with my broker's display which has gone dead. But that's when I shift gears and move to TOL, while trying to figure out which leg of my primay system failed. I've used any number of data vendors over modem, satellite, T-1, etc. None has ever gone any faster than TOL, and many a lot slower. So TOL provides a good datum point. While I have noted occasional millisecond lags in Net data from my broker compared to TOL, 99% of the time the data is displayed with equal speed on both systems. The reality is that the data is being transmitted by both providers at rates far less than my access method is capable of handling. There is little doubt that FR virtually removes the fear of downtime as far as the comm access is considered, but if my broker's servers go down (even when the Net is up), I'm outta luck, FR or not. Being old fashioned, it seemed that paying for a redundant data provider (not on the Net) was a better belt and suspenders approach than FR, given that either the FR or the broker's servers could go down independently. I have never had a TOL failure that I can recall. So I've never lost my view of the market, even if I could not trade electronically. (No commercial is intended for TOL. I'm sure there are other good data providers as well.) The foregoing is a circuitous preamble to my question: What is Cyber's data rate? Would you agree that the number of monitors I drive is independent of the comm data rate as currently practiced by any general provider of market data? Many thanks for any clarifications.