Preventing the Glitch – Chapter 1 cTrader
Computers have surely benefited mankind, apparently with the aid of the ’machine’ we are now smarter, faster and sharper. The
Adil Siddiqui
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Technology
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Institutional FX )
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2012-08-15T17:45:13+00:00
2012-08-15T17:45:13+00:00
Computers have surely benefited mankind, apparently with the aid of the ’machine’ we are now smarter, faster and sharper. The online FX industry can certainly vouch in favour of new technologies, over the last decade electronic-trading has caused a spike in trade volumes and has attracted a new breed of investors. However with any upside there is a down side and the crucial ‘computer glitch’ at Knight Capital shows how vulnerable we still are despite our technology being able to confirm orders in nano seconds!
Forex Magnates team will be discussing the glitch with numerous technology providers to get an overview of what preventative methods are in place.
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cTrader’s Ilya Holeu gave a walk-through of the practises in place to avoid the next machine failure.
Server
The server-side of the cTrader solution takes advantage of the dependable reliability of Virtualization, improving the efficiency and reliability of our IT resources and increasing the utilization and flexibility of our existing IT assets.
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Security
The security strategy at cTrader is strongly founded on the planning and implementation of appropriate and robust hardware and software infrastructure, utilising multiple IBM hardware components, hosted at the Equinix, ISO 27001 certified Data Center.
Back up
cTrader’s PaaS solution uses redundant network connections, with two separate links to two different upstream routers, while the network equipment itself is fully redundant, working in active-active or active-passive mode to guarantee protection in case of hardware failure.
cTrader also runs on top of the highest-grade virtualization software that ensures high-availability in case of physical server failure. The platform has a separate, independent and robust management channels in order to ensure management activities can resume even when the main internet connection is down or experiencing technical difficulties.
In order to avoid incidents such as the major system error at the Tokyo Stock Exchange which slashed trading volumes and had a devastating impact on traders, or the ‘glitch’ which wiped out $440 million of equity at Knight Capital, cTrader continually checks server/network redundancy within scope of business continuity and disaster recovery plan testing.
frankly i doubt anyone can really prevent a glitch from happening, no matter how good the underlying technology is
Michael is totally right.
Knight Capital’s ‘glitch’ was a software error, not a hardware one. No redundant IBM components or certified data centers can prevent them from happening (rather, they would robustly ensure that they will be executed with no problems 🙂 )
There are numerous rough measures by which we could estimate the (im)probability of such software glitches, such as code test coverage percentages — but not many software companies would acknowledge the numbers as usually they are rather low (and there are reasons for that).
If it is a software problem, you can have separate software that can monitor the main platform and alert or restart trading platform when there is a failure. Hardware problems in the computer world are a bit easier to deal with because of virtualization and with electronic trading, since everything is electronic and purely numbers crunching, and minimal ‘moving parts’ , it is simpler to implement redundancy at the end user and broker levels. Redundancy, done correctly, is a very powerful ally. It takes a lot for a commercial airline to just drop out of the sky, and there are… Read more »
Based on this article and video it looks like Knight’s glitch was more of a release/change management issue rather than a software bug. No matter what underlying technology you have, your procedures (requirements management, testing – functional and performance, release management, change management) need to be in place, active and regularly reviewed and updated. I am sure IT guys at Knight are among the best ones in industry, otherwise how their market making business would be executing 10% of all US shares market volume.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-14/knight-software.html
Yes, the root cause of Knight fault was indeed a software error. But the Tokio guys have had issues with their failover scheme where stand by component didn’t run as expected. This second case was a hardware issue… Any platform nowadays should take care about soft-(bugs) hard- and peopleware (change mgmt, monitoring) to be on the safe side. Its good that at least cTrader cares about hardware aspect.
The cTrader team follows secure and stable software development practices to increase the reliability of the cTrader product suite. cTrader has recently obtained an ISAE3402 report from Deloitte and is currently in advanced stages of obtaining ISO27001 certification. Examples of secure software development practices at cTrader: * 100% of our source code changes is reviewed by Senior Software Developers. * All release candidate builds are verified by dedicated Quality Assurance Engineers for a sufficient period of time in several pre-production environments. The setup of those pre-production environments is almost identical to production one which helps us to discover potential configuration/infrastructural… Read more »
That’s great to hear, cTrader Team.
Thank you for your feedback.
so is cTrader set to compete directly with metatrader 4/5?
they will have to create one heck of an ecosystem. There was a discussion here about how metatrader revolutionized retail financial markets. Unlike Tradestation and many other trading platforms that choose to remain proprietary (to a specific brokerage), mt4/5 was available to all brokers who wanted it. The custom indicator/auto trade capability allowed entire communities to be built around sharing strategies and insights. It also acted as a ‘control’ in which we could measure broker performance.
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?p=5922588#post5922588