With NYSE Euronext’s announcement that it is to open up remote access into its Mahwah, NJ data centre, one can expect the network provider community to respond to the opportunity to provide new low-latency routes. First to announce its plans is Cross River Fiber. IntelligentTradingTechnology.com spoke to Michael Sevret, the company’s executive vice president and chief strategy officer, to find out more.
Q: To start, can you tell us some more about Cross River Fiber and what it provides?
A: Cross River Fiber, founded in 2011, is a New Jersey-based CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) and boutique dark fibre solutions provider that designs, constructs and maintains its own independent fibre-optic network infrastructure. Our network solutions provide enterprises that have stringent business requirements dedicated and scalable, high-speed fibre optic network.
Q: You just announced plans to build a new dark fibre network linking NYSE Euronext’s Mahwah data centre to other key financial hubs around New Jersey. What’s the driver for that?
A: There is an insatiable need for ultra low latency fibre routes. Financial services providers are certainly one of the main industries that have propelled the demand, but so has healthcare, media and manufacturing.
The announcement of our dark fibre network to Mahwah was driven by NYSE’s announcement that it has opened up access to third party network providers for direct dark fibre builds.
Q: Can you provide some more detail on what data centres you expect to link into, and when?
A: Currently our network interconnects key data centres in Carteret, Newark and Piscataway with new routes planned from Mahwah to financial exchanges in Carteret, Secaucus and Weehawken in Q4 of this year into early Q1 2013.
Q: Do you have target RTD times for these links? How much of a latency improvement do you expect compared to routing via SFTI? And what about capacity?
A: Our strength lies in building direct and diverse fibre routes, usually at the lowest latency. Our new customised routes will create a very high count, fibre-rich network.
Q: How much faster might Carteret to Mahwah be compared to routing via 165 Halsey?
A: Latency is based on the combination of fibre distance and the equipment used to light the fiber so it’s hard to specify latency numbers, but we can hint that our direct point-to-point network from Mahwah to Carteret, which bypasses 165 Halsey, will be very competitive from an express routing perspective.
Q: Since you are offering dark fibre connectivity, do you expect your customers to be trading firms themselves or network providers? What kind of trading firms will likely be interested in your connectivity?
A: We are experiencing demand from all sides. As a dark fibre provider CLEC, we will be supporting both enterprise firms and network providers. And we are ready to support any trading firm that needs connectivity to and from Mahwah.
Q: What other future plans do you have that would be of interest to financial markets firms?
A: We continue to design and build new routes to carrier hotels, data centres, and direct enterprise facilities that support the financial low-latency eco-system throughout of New Jersey.
