About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

CME’s Aurora Co-Lo: Quick Facts

Subscribe to our newsletter

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange opened its new data centre – housing the Globex matching engine – in August, 2010. Now it’s planning to add co-location services, beginning January 29, 2012. Here’s some more information …

– The data centre is located in Aurora, IL – 40 miles west of the city.

– It is a 428,000+ square foot facility (by comparison, NYSE Euronext’s Mahwah liquidity centre is 400,000 square feet), with two 138,000 volt power sources.  92 megawatts of redundant power is available.

– Low-latency connectivity to Globex is via the internal GLink network, with all connections equidistant to provide equality of access.

– GLink is available at 1 and 10 gigabit per second connections, though inbound rate for both is limited to 1 gigabit.

– Cross connects (between trading firms and third party vendors) within the facility are allowed, and access to GPS antena for latency monitoring/time synchronisation are available.

– Some suggest that pricing will be between $15,000 and $19,000 per month for a 52U rack. Plus a $10,000 deposit per rack.

– Bulk Transport is the name given to a fibre optic connection back to the old matching and co-lo centre at 350 East Cermak Street in Chicago proper. Intercontinental Exchange is there, as is Equinix’s data centre and Telx.

– A number of third party connectivity providers are expected to connect into Aurora. The current approved list of providers comprises: AboveNet, AT&T, Hudson Fibre Network, Level 3 Communications, NTT Communications, Sidera Networks and Verizon.

– Not on the CME’s list today, Anova Technologies’ CEO Mike Persico says the company plans to provide the fastest route between Aurora and 350 East Cermak.

– Spread Networks, which operates the fastest network between 350 East Cermak and various endpoints in the NYC metro region has already stated it does not plan to link directly into Aurora.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: Modernising Equities Trading Infrastructure: Architecture, Resilience and the Economics of Change

Equities markets are entering a more distributed, always-on phase. Liquidity is fragmenting across venues and geographies, trading hours are extending toward 24/5 and beyond, and market data volumes, investor expectations and competitive pressure are all rising at once. Many of the platforms that still underpin the equities industry were built for a different era –...

BLOG

A-Team Group Announces Capital Markets Technology APAC Awards 2026 Winners and Launches ‘State of the Market’ Report

A-Team Group today announced the highly anticipated winners of the Capital Markets Technology APAC Awards 2026. These prestigious awards celebrate the most innovative solution providers and financial institutions that are reshaping the capital markets technology landscape across the dynamic Asia Pacific region. In conjunction with the awards, A-Team Group has also launched the “State of...

EVENT

RegTech Summit New York

Now in its 10th year, the RegTech Summit in New York will bring together the RegTech ecosystem to explore how the North American capital markets financial industry can leverage technology to drive innovation, cut costs and support regulatory change.

GUIDE

Tackling the Data Management Challenges of FATCA

As the July 1, 2014 deadline for compliance with the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act – or FATCA – approaches, financial institutions around the world are working to ensure their data management and operational systems will meet the requirements of the US legislation. This report discusses the requirements of FATCA and how the legislation is...