Accurate Time-Stamping Solutions for Financial Services

Highly accurate and reliable synchronization of computer systems in financial applications is a key success factor and a mandatory prerequisite for being able to fulfill legal requirements. It also allows to measure network latency, enabling network engineers to optimize processes and transactions by identifying the bottlenecks in a transaction path. Time synchronization also helps to improve protection mechanisms against market abuse as it allows to identify manipulated time stamps. In order to be able to compare time stamps created by distributed systems or network nodes, they have to be based on the same reference. For legal reasons, this has to be the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) timescale which is the global reference for time. Traceability to UTC is a key requirement in most legislation.

MiFID II Compliance

With MiFID II set for January 3, 2018 the financial industry is currently trying to meet the clock synchronization UTC divergence requirements as specified. MiFID II will introduce the requirement for trading venues, their members and participants to synchronize the business clocks used to record the date and time of reportable events to UTC. To have any validity, the measurements should relate back through a traceability chain of comparisons with known uncertainties to one of the timing institutes that maintain a physical representation of UTC time scale. The limit of maximum divergence allowed depends on the trading systems’ gateway-to-gateway latency time, and for members and participants based on the type of trading activities being performed. For systems with an inter-gateway latency of less than 1 millisecond the MiFID II rules require a time-stamping accuracy of better than 100 microseconds, as described in RTS 25, the supporting Regulatory Technical Standards which deals with clock synchronization.

Obtaining Traceability

Meinberg‘s LANTIME time servers has been designed to fulfill the emerging time-stamping requirements of the financial sector. The on-board clock module carries a highly stable oscillator that is utilized to generate the base synchronization signals which are distributed to all I/O modules. In case of a complete loss of all external synchronization sources, the clock module enters hold-over mode and allows the output modules to maintain the required time sync accuracy for a certain amount of time. Different oscillator options allow the end-user to upgrade the LANTIME's holdover performance to achieve a holdover capability of 115 hours, at a maximum phase deviation of 100 microseconds.

The Meinberg time stamping unit HPS (High Precision Synchronization) provides a future-proof platform for your IEEE 1588 / NTP infrastructure. The high-performance processing unit, the 1-step master clock and the 1GE interface with SFP slot support a very large number of PTP clients. Thousands of IEEE 1588 slave devices or NTP clients can be synchronized, both in IPv4 and IPv6 networks, for example transaction servers running high-frequency trading applications.

For NTP-based synchronization, each of the HPS-100 network interfaces can be configured to act as a carrier grade NTP server with 8 ns time stamp accuracy, serving up to 409600 NTP requests per second on each port. Each HPS module can serve time to up to 2,048 PTP Slaves at full Unicast rate (128 sync / 128 delay req. per second) or 250K DelayRequests per second in Enterprise Profile / Hybrid mode.

Synchronization Solutions for Financial Applications

Meinberg offers an extensive product range for synchronizing financial data centers, trading solutions and analytical engines as well as transaction processing systems. The high quality and performance level of the LANTIME and SyncFire family ensure best-in-class synchronization accuracy and enable Meinberg customers to optimize their latency measurement solutions and fulfill all legal requirements concerning timestamp accuracy. Some of the worlds' largest exchanges chose Meinberg as their primary supplier for synchronization solutions based on Precision Time Protocol (PTP, IEEE 1588) and Network Time Protocol (NTP) technology.

Multinational investment banks, asset management corporations, clearing houses, data and listing services, derivatives and equity markets operators and participants rely on Meinberg technology in all relevant financial centers in Europe, North America, Asia/Pacific.

IMS - Intelligent Modular Synchronization Systems

The Meinberg Intelligent Modular Synchronization platform provides an unmatched level of flexibility, scalability and reliability, allowing the synchronization solution to grow or adopt to new requirements whenever a new application needs a new level of synchronization or an existing network has to change in order to fulfill changed requirements.

NTP Time Server: LANTIME Stratum 1 Server for all Networks

The LANTIME family of NTP appliances is deployed in banks, insurance companies and other financial networks and synchronizes millions of NTP clients like workstations, servers and network equipment to optimize network performance, increase visilibity of network states and conditions and improves measurement and statistical record quality, allowing to better plan network upgrades and reduce downtime and failures.