Simulating Fiber Optic Links and Latency at Financial Institutions

Posted by Kevin Miller on Fri, Sep 13, 2019 @ 11:09 AM

For banking and financial companies in the digital age, having reliable and predictable connectivity to markets along with minimal latency is critical to their success.  A financial network backbone must ensure a customer’s access to funds, particularly after hours, while delivering an additional layer of security and visibility of the most up to date financial data.  But how can a bank or financial institution have confidence that their network will perform as expected?  The solution is to accurately simulate field links and latency in a lab environment to validate system performance will be at the high level it needs to be.

We’ve previously written about the importance of minimizing latency in financial networks.  With time delays now regularly being measured in fractions of a second and stock prices constantly fluctuating, the large volume buying and selling of shares by financial institutions and high frequency traders can be positively or negatively impacted to the tune of millions of dollars in just fractions of a second.

The advent of blockchain technology also makes high reliability and minimal latency all the more important. Networks need to reliably and rapidly transmit and receive updates as part of the blockchain.  As financial institutions adopt this evolving technology and strive for faster speeds, the need to simulate optical links and connectivity becomes even more important.

Financial institutions evaluating the technologies that will operate on their fiber optic network must simulate the real-world environment in a manner that matches their actual physical topography.  Taking advantage of fully-customized Fiber Lab network simulation and time delay platforms from M2 Optics, financial institutions can not only perform comprehensive simulations using the same optical fibers deployed in the field, but do it in the most efficient and professional setup configuration to obtain consistent results.  These network simulation solutions help to provide peace of mind for engineering teams working hard to ensure their gear will achieve the intended results. 

Fiber_Lab_3200R Network and Latency Simulator Shown: 
Fiber Lab 3200R Network and Latency Simulator


This is the age of global finance.  With world trading markets available around the clock, financial institutions leveraging AI to reduce risk or make better trade decisions, and stop loss orders that need immediate execution, the network driving these decisions and transactions has to be predictable, reliable and instant.  When tasked with ensuring that their fiber-based systems will both meet the required specifications and operate within expected parameters, Fiber Lab solutions along with M2’s application expertise has served as a valuable asset to leading banks, financial institutions, and high-frequency trading firms.


Want to learn more?

Download the Optical Fiber Latency Calculator:  This popular and useful reference tool quickly calculates the expected time delay for any length of the most widely-deployed single mode and multimode optical fibers.

Contact the M2 Team: with any questions you may have – general, technical, or designing a new solution, we’re here to support you!

Topics: latency