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

Upcoming Webinar: From Monolith to Modular: Architecting Equity Trading Platforms for 24/5 and Beyond

Date: 14 October 2026 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes 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...

BLOG

Quantum Readiness in Trading: Why Cryptography and Data Governance Matter More Than Qubits

Quantum computing is becoming one of the most widely discussed emerging technologies in financial markets infrastructure. In industry commentary, the technology is often framed either as a revolutionary engine for trading performance or as an existential threat to the cryptographic systems that secure global finance. In practice however, the near-term impact is likely to be...

EVENT

ExchangeTech Summit London

A-Team Group, organisers of the TradingTech Summits, are pleased to announce the inaugural ExchangeTech Summit London on May 14th 2026. This dedicated forum brings together operators of exchanges, alternative execution venues and digital asset platforms with the ecosystem of vendors driving the future of matching engines, surveillance and market access.

GUIDE

FATCA – The Time to Act is Now

The US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act – aka FATCA – raised eyebrows when its final regulations requiring foreign financial institutions (FFIs) to report US accounts to US tax authorities were published last year. But with the exception of a few modifications, the legislation remains in place and starts to comes into force in earnest...