Bank invests in low latency monitoring

Global investment bank Credit Suisse is rolling out a monitoring system for its low-latency network. The system will support the bank's need to handle hundreds of thousands of market data messages per second in an auditable fashion.

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The CorvilNet Latency Management System, supplied by Corvil and implemented by BT, allows network administrators to specify latency benchmarks and automatically monitors Credit Suisse's network against those baselines, alerting the IT team if performance falls below par and recommending specific remedial action to raise performance to expectations.

Credit Suisse head of networks, James Walker, told silicon.com the adoption of algorithmic trading and Direct Market Access (a service that allows private investors to place, buy and sell orders directly on a stock exchange's order books) are driving increases in trade volumes by four to six times per year, and depend on reliable low latency networks.

He said: "The need to increase speed and reduce latency is a priority for all financial services firms using real-time market data or accessing trade execution venues. The key driver behind this is the shift in the market from trading strategies executed by people to trading strategies executed by computer systems."

The monitoring system was trialled during 2007 and will be rolled out to the bank's entire network by the end of this year.