Metamako, a provider of intelligent, FPGA-enabled network platforms, is providing its technology to Deutsche Börse Group. The exchange is using the company’s network devices to increase the accuracy, speed and precision of data capture, network monitoring and timestamping of its co-location network. Every trade is now monitored by a Metamako device, making it an integral part of the Deutsche Börse infrastructure. The deployment pertains to its 2017 network upgrade of the Eurex and Xetra markets.

The exchange is deploying Metamako’s K-Series network devices running MetaWatch, an ultra-precise tapping and timestamping application, which gives the exchange unprecedented insight into the customer-facing part of its network. It also gives Deutsche Börse the ability to accurately record and recreate all trading activity to ensure fairer market access for participants along with enabling real-time troubleshooting.

Andreas Lohr, Derivatives and Cash Trading IT at Deutsche Börse Group, says: “We went through a thorough process of evaluating vendors and chose Metamako for a number of reasons. Some of the key considerations were lossless packet capture (even at very high data volumes), nanosecond timestamp precision, in-depth understanding of our industry and responsiveness of the Metamako team.”

Kevin Covington, CEO of Metamako, says: “This is an important double milestone for Metamako: winning one of the world’s largest and most technically-advanced exchanges is a fantastic achievement, as is getting one of the largest single orders so far, of 60 of our K-Series devices.”

Since implementation of Metamako, Deutsche Börse has seen a number of tangible improvements to its network capture and monitoring. Notably, it can now:

• Offer clients the most reliable, high-quality trading network.
• Conduct more precise planning, e.g. capacity planning.
• Ensure fair and equal market access for trading participants by precisely timestamping the sequence of incoming orders and quotes.
• See and analyse every packet and therefore be able to diagnose and recreate any trading event.

In conjunction with STAC® (Securities Technology Analysis Center LLC) Metamako recently developed a set of industry benchmarks for measuring timestamp accuracy and time synchronisation.