MIT: Light Speed Now a Bottleneck in Fastest Networks - PC World

With global networks carrying complex time-sensitive data, the speed of light is actually becoming a significant source of latency, researchers have found.

While today's fiber optics-based networks can shuttle data around the world at the speed of light -- momentarily slowed only by routing and switching -- the vast geographic distances data has to travel can be a factor of delay, especially when the information itself is generated so quickly by computers and is useful only within a very short time period. At least one industry, finance, is starting to chafe at this limit.

"For high frequency trading, light propagation delays are in many cases are the single largest limiting factor to taking advantage of arbitrage opportunities quickly," said study co-author Alexander Wissner-Gross, who a research affiliate of the MIT Media Laboratory and the founder of the Enernetics research consultancy.

As a result, the researchers recommend high frequency trading firms, as well as any organization that deals in complicated time-sensitive global interactions, take a hard look at where they locate their data centers. In other words, location really does matter.

"By positioning an intermediate node, there is the potential to partially skirt that light-speed delay," Wissner-Gross said.

The MIT work was recently published in the Physical Review E scientific journal. The subject, as well as the paper itself, will be the topic of one talk at the High Frequency Trading World conference, being held this week in New York.

High Frequency Trading (HFT) is the financial industry's short-hand term for how they use computers to analyze the market and rapidly buy and sell shares of stocks and other financial instruments. Such firms rarely refine their trading to only a single exchange, so by necessity they route information around the globe to different exchanges.

"There are many types of transaction that fundamentally depend on sources of information from multiple places around the earth," said study co-author Cameron Freer, who is a mathematics researcher at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (and was at MIT when the paper was written). Some finance firms, for instance, may trade against momentary price discrepancies between the London and New York exchanges.

Typically it takes about 50 milliseconds to send a message from New York to London. Placing a server in between the two could cut the speed of communication in half, Wissner-Gross reasoned, which may be enough time to take advantage of some momentary pricing discrepancy. The hyper-competitive finance industry will continue to cut transaction times wherever possible, which will make light-speed delays more pronounced in the years to come, the paper argues. Light travels at 299,792,458 meters per second, or about approximately 186,282 miles per second.

"As financial trading moves to higher frequencies , it will be more and more useful to organize both networks and the computers that sit on them in unique geographic ways that take advantage of the geographic positions of various stock exchanges in order to coordinate light speed trading between them," Wissner-Gross said.

The researchers came up with a general formula that an organization can use to derive the best location to sit in between multiple sources of information. They did not take into account delays inherent in networking due to equipment latencies, assuming an organization could factor these numbers into their own equations.

Using this formula, the researchers also triangulated the best locations in the world for locating servers that do high frequency trading across 52 exchanges worldwide. A few of the prime locations include spots in the middle of the ocean, or in small countries with as-of-yet underdeveloped communications infrastructures.

Ultimately, this sort of work may bring about new data center hotspots around the globe, the researchers predict. "Geography may be viewed as a new type of natural resource," Wissner-Gross said.

Freer maintains that this work would have implications for other organizations in addition the hyper-fast financial market.

"Any application where it is important for you to coordinate in multiple locations in a low latency way, and the reason you need those latencies because situations can change rapidly at those locations. Our treatment is quite flexible and deals with a large class of systems that are fluctuating in multiple locations and where coordination is necessary," Freer said.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

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US steps up pressure on China to rein in North Korea - Washington Post

The United States has stepped up diplomatic pressure on China by accusing its leaders of "enabling" North Korea to start a uranium-enrichment program and to launch attacks on South Korea, a senior U.S. administration official said this weekend.

In response to the North Korean moves and apparent Chinese acquiescence, Washington is moving to redefine its relationship with South Korea and Japan, potentially creating an anti-China bloc in Northeast Asia that officials say they don't want but may need.

In meetings with their Chinese counterparts in Beijing and in Washington since North Korea launched a deadly artillery barrage at a South Korean island on Nov. 23, U.S. officials have charged that China is turning a blind eye to North Korean violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions, international agreements and a 1953 armistice halting the Korean War that China helped to negotiate.

The accusations mark a further deterioration of the tone and direction of the U.S. relationship with Asia's emerging giant and come as both countries prepare for a second summit next month between President Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao.

"The Chinese embrace of North Korea in the last eight months has served to convince North Korea that China has its back and has encouraged it to behave with impunity," said a senior administration official speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "We think the Chinese have been enabling North Korea."

The Korean Peninsula, the official added, has catapulted to the "top of the security agenda when President Hu comes here . . . and the Chinese are aware of it."

Obama called Hu on Sunday night to discuss North Korea and urged China to help send a clear message to Pyongyang "that its provocations are unacceptable," the White House said Monday.

"The president emphasized the need for North Korea to halt its provocative behavior and to meet its international obligations," the White House said. "The president condemned the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island on November 23 and its pursuit of a uranium enrichment program in defiance of its obligations." It said Obama "also highlighted the American commitment to the security of our allies in the region."

The White House statement said Obama and Hu agreed on the importance of working together toward the "shared goals" of peace and stability in Northeast Asia and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But it made no mention of Hu's response to Obama's complaints about North Korea."

A Chinese statement on the phone call said Hu "regrets the loss of lives and property" in the North Korean shelling last month. It was the first such comment from Hu about the attack, but it echoed an earlier North Korean expression of regret for killing civilians.

The U.S. exasperation with China over the Koreas has been evident since June, when Obama accused China of "willful blindness" in remaining silent over North Korea's suspected sinking of a South Korean warship in March. But the administration's position now that China is in effect partially to blame for the problems is new.

At a meeting Monday with the foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton hopes to begin the process of tightening the three-way relationship, as a response to the persistent North Korean provocations and China's inaction. The United States and South Korea announced Friday the successful renegotiation of their free-trade agreement, which will be as important strategically as it is economically to the U.S. presence in the region.

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Level 3 'Clarifies' Position On Comcast Fees - Consumer Affairs

Mark Huffman
ConsumerAffairs.com

December 6, 2010
In case there was any confusion about its position on Comcast's new fees, Level 3 Communications has issued another statement on the controversy.

The issue first surfaced last week when Level 3 complained that Comcast has announced its intention to levy ongoing fees for delivering content to Comcast, such as movies, that Comcast's subscribers have requested. Level 3 is a major supplier of streaming technology for NetFlix, which delivers video content via the Internet.

Comcast has countered that Level 3 is trying to gain an unfair advantage over competitors by using Comcast's network to deliver content without paying for it.

"Comcast's characterization could not be more misleading," Level 3 said in a statement.  "What is truly at stake is whether consumers should have unfettered access to all the content on the Internet without regard to whether that content happens to be owned or packaged by Comcast."

Supporters of the concept of Net neutrality have seized on the controversy as an illustration of why the policy is needed. They say consumers will end up paying more for some content if network providers are able to discriminate among content providers. Opponents, on the other hand, say it perfectly illustrates why Net neutrality is unfair to network operators.

Level 3 says the disagreement is not a "peering dispute,†as Comcast has characterized it.

"At issue is a fundamental interconnection disagreement between Comcast, as a provider of local high speed Internet access to consumers who pay Comcast for access to content, and Level 3, which delivers content to residential broadband access providers like Comcast in response to consumer requests,†the company said.

Unlike "peering" in the Internet backbone, where competition abounds and prices have been declining steadily, Level 3 said, Internet carriers that have content requested by Comcast subscribers have no choice but to exchange traffic with Comcast.

"Comcast is using this dominant position to demand payment for traffic delivered at its customers' requests. You simply cannot "route around" Comcast to provide requested content to Comcast's subscribers," Level 3 said.

Comcast says the fees it charges are commonplace and standard within the industry. Level 3 says that's not the case.

"No other broadband access provider in the U.S. is now charging Level 3 the type of fees that Comcast is charging," the company said. "It is Comcast that seeks to change the common approach, changing the rules of the game in an unreasonable and discriminatory manner."

The controversy began last month with NetFlix retained Level 3 to provide the bulk of the streaming services needed to send movies to subscribers. Level 3 asked Comcast and other Internet Service Providers to give it more access to their networks so they could handled the expected increase in traffic from NetFlix.

When Level 3 asked Comcast for new interconnection ports to its network, it didn't expect to pay anything for that since it said it was providing content requested by Comcast customers. Comcast, while also sells video content to its subscribers, views it as unfair competition, and says paying a fee to deliver content over its network is reasonable.

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Police: Usfiya boy, 14, admits to starting Carmel fire - Jerusalem Post

A 14-year-old resident of Usfiya was arrested on Monday on suspicion of hurling a charcoal from a water-pipe into a forest clearing near Usfiya on Thursday morning, witnessing the ignition of a large fire, and fleeing the scene. Police suspect the boy's actions directly led to the Carmel forest inferno.

The youth confessed to the suspicions against him and reenacted his alleged actions on Monday, police added.

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After witnessing the flames grow out of control, the youth became panicked, "ran back to his school [in Usfiya], and did not report the fire to anyone," police said.

The youth will appear before the Haifa Magistrate's Court on Tuesday morning for a remand hearing.

Hof police spokesman Mor Inbar told The Jerusalem Post that four additional Usfiya youths were questioned in recent days in connection with the water-pipe incident.

They included two brothers aged 16 and 14 who were arrested on Sunday, and who were released by the Haifa District Court on Monday after Judge Avraham Elikim accepted an appeal by attorneys representing the brothers against a decision by the Haifa Magistrate's Court to keep them in custody until Wednesday.

Judge Elikim noted that police suspect the minors of causing death through criminal negligence, but added that the suspects' young age represented an alleviating factor in the suspicions against them. "There is no disputing the trauma caused by the fires to many people, but we should not place a national disaster on the shoulders of two minors," Judge Elikim said during his decision on Monday.

Two additional minors were detained for questioning - though not arrested - by officers from the Hof police sub-district's central unit on Monday and released, before the 14-year-old suspect was arrested.
Meanwhile, Police Spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said a total of four suspects around the country have been arrested in recent days on suspicion of deliberately setting off smaller fires. Two suspects were arrested in the Jerusalem area and two more were arrested in Acre on suspicion of arson attacks.

Rosenfeld said "over 20 smaller fires around the country" that broke out since Thursday were suspected acts of arson. All of the smaller fires were put out by firefighters and did not cause injury.
A day after the last of the dead from the Prisons Service members who were burned to death in their bus near Kibbutz Bet Oren were buried, police said a full examination was underway to determine what could be learned from the tragedy. However, a police source added that no decision had yet been made about an investigations committee.

According to police, the bus, driven by 48-year-old David Navon - who was posthumously recruited into the Prison Service on Monday - attempted to turn around on the narrow single-lane highway connecting Bet Oren Junction to Atlit, after screeching to a halt in front of a wall of fire.

As the flames engulfed the vehicle from both directions, desperate IPS staff members attempted to flee the bus, and ran straight into the flames. The bus was accompanied by police cars containing Lior Boker, Itzik Melina, and Haifa police chief Ahuva Tomer, all whom died of burns related injuries.

Parents of two victims from the Prison Service - Roee Biton and Hagai Jerno, came forward on Monday to accuse the authorities of failing to prepare staff members with sending them on a mission to evacuate the Damon prison without means to defend themselves against a fire.

The families told Ynet said they did not blame the IPS for the tragedy, but rather "those who were responsible for putting out the fires, evacuating homes, and closing off roads."

A police source added, "Obviously, this tragedy will be examined from all directions, from the intelligence to the operational level. Lessons will be learned. An incident of this scale cannot go by without being examined in detail."

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Tea Party group says Palin should lead GOP - USA Today

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