About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
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: Agility as Alpha: How Trading Infrastructure Determines Who Wins in Volatile Markets

Date: 21 May 2026 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes Tariff shocks, geopolitical realignment and macroeconomic regime shifts are redrawing the investment landscape faster than most firms’ technology stacks can keep up. For hedge funds and asset managers, the ability to move quickly into new asset classes, geographies or...

BLOG

Bigger is Better, Says Gresham CEO After Acquisition of S&P Global’s EDM Business

Gresham has finalised its acquisition of S&P Global’s EDM business as the data automation company expands to meet the growing and increasingly complex data needs of modern financial institutions. EDM, which supports more than US$12 trillion in assets, will sit alongside Gresham’s existing enterprise data management business, which was created with its merger with Alveo...

EVENT

TEST Event page 1

Now in its 15th year the TradingTech Summit London brings together the European trading technology capital markets industry and examines the latest changes and innovations in trading technology and explores how technology is being deployed to create an edge in sell side and buy side capital markets financial institutions.

GUIDE

Entity Data Management Handbook – Third Edition

Welcome to the third edition of the Entity Data Management Handbook which is available for free download. In this updated edition we delve into the role entity data plays in the smooth running of financial institutions and capital markets, the challenges of attaining high quality data, and various aspects, approaches and technologies involved in managing...