NxCore Feed

NxCore Data Feed

Executive Summary

I tried every kind of abuse I could think of, including a product update during RTH, intentional destruction of files, etc. NxCore corrected every situation.

Allan Kaminsky

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Contact

Sales
Jerry Chandler
800-652-2291
402-255-8229
NxCoreSales@DTN.com

NxCore (pronounced n'core) is a high-performance, real-time streaming datafeed (ticker plant) that brings the whole market to your workstation or desktop computer. NxCore excels in delivering and databasing all the quotes and trades transmitted by the exchanges, even in the hyper-active U.S. Option market (OPRA) which now transmits over 1,400,000 quotes per second, and 6 billion quotes per trading day.

NxCore is extremely efficient in bandwidth utilization and will save you thousands of dollars in monthly communications costs. In a single T-1 (1.5mbps), it will fit 40,000 quote and trade updates per second; In 6.0 mbps, it will fit 160,000 updates/sec. Other OPRA feed providers now require a T-3 (30 T-1 lines) and yet provide less information per update than NxCore. Plus, NxCore offers an optional BBO only stream for OPRA data that is 40% smaller than the full OPRA stream.

NxCore redefines low latency. NxCore compressed packets often arrived faster than uncompressed packets. This occurs because of the rare combination of blazing compression speed (microsecond) and an astonishing high compression ratio (95%), which translates into much lower network serialization latency. In effect, the time saved though lower serialization delays from each router, store and forward switch, and network interface card along the path, more than offsets the spent compressing. NxCore easily handles sustained update speeds exceeding 1 million updates/second on inexpensive hardware.

NxCore is robust. It can be interrupted for any length of time and will quickly restore the feed from the exact point of loss so that no quote or trade update is ever dropped. Every computer with an application processing an NxCore feed with the same exchange permissions will see identical information, no matter where the computers are located or how many or what types of interruptions one computer has had. Not one single quote or trade update will be different. Even if your developers are on the other side of the globe, they will have the exact same stream of data feeding your production system. This greatly reduces debugging time which leaves more time to focus on your algorithms.

NxCore has an easy to use API for developing trading software. No parsing required, it uses simple fixed structures and includes important and frequently used information in every quote and trade update. NxCore includes tools to help you visualize and understand data relationships in the feed. And NxCore lets you replay the data at blazing speeds (2 million+ updates/second) on inexpensive hardware. Converting from existing feeds becomes a trivial exercise.

NxCore databases everything: all quotes, trades and other real-time updates are stored on your computer. If you are developing or have your own in-house ticker plant, NxCore is ideal for evaluating your ticker's output performance and data integrity. NxCore also makes an ideal back-up feed, ready to go online should your primary feed fail or require down-time.

NxCore is rich in content -- both regional exchange AND national best bid/offer updates, exchange sequence numbers in every trade, accurate sub-second timestamps, and real-time exchange correction message processing to name a few. Every option contract update includes an integer strike price and expiration date, excellent up-to-date option chain information, and for special settlement option contracts: the actual settlement formula so you can price the underlying.

NxCore is flexible, with subscriptions available on an individual exchange basis. Plus, each exchange can be permissioned for trade updates only, allowing the creation of light-weight, yet data rich streams ideal for ultra low bandwidth environments. For example, the average bandwidth used by a set of trade-only streams including NYSE, AMEX, NASDAQ, OPRA, and CME will fit on a 56.6K modem line, yet contain over 60 million streaming time and sales records in a single active trading day: makes a great source for market scanning type applications (hot-lists).

NxCore requires minimal computer resources. Unlike some datafeeds that require hardware costing over $10,000, NxCore can run on a low-end Pentium laptop (1.0 GHz, 256MB of RAM, 80GB IDE hard drive) and receive and database 1,400,000 quotes/second, over 6 billion/day; and CPU usage will remain under 5%

NxCore is server-room friendly: it installs and runs in seconds from a single 135K executable file, requires no special components, and never requires a reboot. Even uninstalling is fast and complete, leaving the system without a trace and without requiring a reboot. NxCore is self-maintaining and can upgrade automatically or on a schedule. There is even a built-in chat feature instantly linking you to NxCore support for times when email and voice are less than ideal or unavailable -- handy in noisy server rooms and equally handy on open wireless networks.

NxCore was created and is actively supported by Eric Scott Hunsader who has 20 years of hands-on experience developing successful real-time trading software. You can get answers to tough feed development questions and even find solutions from a growing collection of royalty-free source code written by someone with a wealth of coding experience. NxCore directly processes the output from DTN's high performance internal ticker processors, which were created and are actively supported by a team of the brightest and most experienced in the business.

See NxCore yourself in a live demo with the actual product. Install takes seconds and won't change your computer settings. NxCore can be quickly and completely removed at any time. Seeing NxCore perform will forever change the way you think about high-performance data feeds. We look forward to serving you.