“In the financial industry, losing any data is a big deal. That’s why we use Observer Expert and GigaStor to ensure we see everything.” John Rittner Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) Network Manager

Challenge

In the financial services sector, a minute can be worth millions. With constantly changing markets and an immense number of transactions per second, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) needed to ensure that every trade went through – every time. Nano-level hiccups in their system could cause big problems for the investors upon which CBOE depends, so gaining that level of granular visibility was absolutely crucial. The financial services space is also subject to a multitude of privacy and compliance regulations due to the sensitive nature of the data flowing across their networks. This, combined with the unique challenges of multicast traffic, which distributes the same “live” feeds to many users, meant CBOE would need an analysis solution powerful enough to meet these special needs. CBOE sought to update their packet capture and analysis technology, and to do so in a comprehensive and costeffective manner. In making their decision, they would need to consider options that would allow them not only the visibility they needed, but also to address strict compliance regulations and forensics needs.

Solution

CBOE purchased from Network Instruments® several GigaStors, along with a number of Observer® Expert Consoles. The Network Instruments products provided full decodes for the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocol, commonly used by financial service, brokerage, and banking firms for transactions involved in buying and selling within financial markets. The GigaStor™ is a retrospective network analysis solution that allows network administrators to capture up to 576 TB of network data at line rate and play it back for later analysis. Available in standard, portable, and expandable versions, GigaStor can handle the busiest Gigabit and 10 Gb networks. Network Manager John Rittner felt the GigaStor would provide his company with the line-rate packet capture its gigabit ethernet network required, plus on-board features not found in competing solutions. Of particular value were time-interval analysis and Connection Dynamics, which allows for graphically viewing system conversations and pinpointing delays. “We find that we often don’t hear about problems until hours after they’ve happened,” Rittner said. “By deploying the GigaStor at strategic places on the network we have the ability to go back in time, filter down to the particular traffic of interest and then do our analysis. This saves us a lot of time that would’ve been spent recreating the issue or waiting for it to happen again.”

Consulting the Expert

By employing Observer Expert -- a network analysis solution featuring VoIP and wireless experts, application analysis, and stream reconstruction -- Rittner was able to isolate issues such as transaction delay and better

address application errors and response time concerns. CBOE uses the version of Observer Expert included on the GigaStor, as well as console and laptop versions. “Some of the Observer Expert tools we find useful are Connection Dynamics and time interval analysis,” Rittner said. “Expert allows us to quickly narrow down the problem, or even determine if there was a network problem at all.” Observer Expert also allowed CBOE to automate processes they had previously done by hand, which were not only tedious, but also resulted in longer times to resolution. “Oftentimes we would have to export the data we’d captured with our old solution into an Excel spreadsheet and massage it to get the kind of data we now get from time interval analysis,” Rittner said. “It was a very laborintensive, manual process. The ability to filter down on specific traffic flows and do time interval analysis has been very valuable.”

Little Bursts, Big Money

Because financial transactions are often placed quickly, based on what is occurring in the market at a specific instant in time, it is important that all users are able to have the most up-to-date information. As such, the financial services industry uses multicast signals to send live, redundant streams from multiple locations to many data recipients. CBOE uses multicast to ensure their customers get the most accurate quote and trade data. “Financial multicast data is particularly bursty traffic. It doesn’t rate limit itself or adapt to the available bandwidth like TCP does,” Rittner said. “Sub-second bursts can be quite large. Simply looking at router or switch statistics can mask these micro-bursts that we

“The ability to capture and store huge amounts of network data and…run it against things like Connection Dynamics and Time Interval Analysis, all at a better price point, is an easy choice.” John Rittner

can find through time interval analysis. In the financial industry, losing any data is a big deal. That’s why we use Observer Expert and GigaStor to ensure we see everything. “For example, a few years ago we had a problem whereby some of our customers were seeing a small amount of packet loss in the multicast market data they received from us. We confirmed that the data was leaving our network and being sent to their WAN service provider. We also looked at the data rates, which seemed to be fine. It was only after days of investigation when we exported the captured data to Excel that we discovered some micro-bursts were exceeding the bandwidth of the customer’s WAN circuit. Now with the GigaStors and Observer we can perform the same analysis in minutes.”

Financial Success Strategy

Rittner’s team in Chicago is tasked with network design and analysis for the CBOE LAN/WAN as well as the networks for the CBOE Futures Exchange (CFE), CBOE Stock Exchange (CBSX) and the OneChicago Exchange. They have found their combination of Network Instruments solutions to be a powerful and versatile tool for making their demanding jobs easier. “Often we find that the problem is congestion of WAN links that are not under our control,” Rittner said. “We need to look at the traffic flowing over a given path and

determine the bandwidth. The ability to use GigaStor on that is a big time saver.” Rittner said CBOE placed the GigaStors and Expert Consoles in strategic locations across the network, with the GigaStors being placed on core links and externalfacing interfaces such as connections to member firms and market data vendors. He also has several copies of Observer installed on laptops, which can easily be carried around to analyze point problems and edge issues.

A Sound Investment

established in 1973, when it created and listed the first exchange-listed standardized stock options. The CBOE is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its options contracts are cleared by the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC). As of 2007 the Wall Street Journal estimates that, globally, the market capitalization of the derivatives markets exceeds 450 trillion dollars.

Network Instruments Solutions • GigaStor • Observer Expert

CBOE’s decision to choose Network Instruments products for their financial network troubleshooting and analysis needs was not a difficult one. “Network Instruments simply has a better value proposition,” Rittner said. “The ability to capture and store huge amounts of network data and be able to run it against things like Connection Dynamics and time interval analysis, all at a better price point, is an easy choice.”

About Chicago Board Options Exchange

The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) is one of the world’s largest options exchanges with an annual trade of over 450 million options contracts, covering more than 1200 companies, 50 stock indexes, and 50 exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The exchange was

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