Stale ARCA/Island quotes in a Market Depth Window

[ScottJ]

Mountain Trader,

First off, based on the frustration evident in your response, I'm sorry we've caused you such aggravation. That's clearly not our goal or intent.

The problems with ARCA have gone on too long and I agree that no ETA is not acceptable. I'll work with our Head of Engineering to make sure a time table is in place and communicated to customers.

Each week, we compare our feed against several other sources to insure our timeliness and accuracy. In all honesty, we have never seen a delay of even 3 seconds. In most cases, all the sources are within 1-2 seconds of each other and we do test at market open as well. Our goal is to be #1 in speed and reliability in all categories ( US stocks, Euro Stocks, US Futs, etc. )

If there is a 30 second delay on your end, clearly there's a problem somewhere. The trick is figuring out where the problem is. That's where we start looking at specific symbols, what servers were involved, the customers internet connection, PC specs, etc. There are literally hundreds of variables to troubleshoot.

If you ever feel you are not getting satisfactory results from our Support Groups, you can use this Customer Care email form to send your feedback directly to Senior Management.

Thank you.

[MountainTrader]

I am not going to waste my time sending email to Customer Care. The fact that my posts to this board last August and November regarding the ARCA and Island books were payed nothing but lip service is sufficient indication that nothing comes of anything sent into the black hole of this forum.

Instead, I will in the next few days be addressing a letter via registered US mail to Mr. Chuck Thomson to make him aware of what's going on with your product and customer support.

I suggest you do a search for my posts on this board. There are only a handful. They gave specific information regarding problems with ARCA and Island books, and more recently I offered specific information answering another user's question where the esignal "support team", was, as usual, clueless. (This was in regards to the merger of Island and Instinet.)

As for the data lags, I appreciate what you are saying about the difficulty of tracking down the problem, but what are we as customers supposed to do about it? I contacted LiveRep a couple of weeks ago when I first saw the problem and was told to call support and compare data (no toll free number of course). Guess what? I do not have time to do this during the trading day - especially during periods of high market activity which is exactly when your feed was falling behind.

You are getting multiple reports of this problem - you should take them seriously and not try to shift the responsibility of diagnosis to your customers who are using your product to put on trades in the market. Trading is my job - providing accurate and timely data is yours. If you can't do your job, I will fire you as my data provider.

It would help quite a bit if there were someone in your customer support group who knew something about trading, the markets, software, etc., but clearly there is not. We bring up issues, they go into the black hole of "engineering", and nothing is ever heard again until a new thread is started and you pretend you've never heard of the problem before.

Again, I implore you to check my posts and the replies I received- you'll see that AndyS told me last summer that my issues with ARCA and Island had been replicated and would be addressed. Nothing ever happened.

Then in November another poster pointed out there were problems, and I posted in reply. That thread, too, resulted in NOTHING.

So please tell me what you think I should tell Mr. Thomson in my forthcoming letter?

[ScottJ]

Mountain Trader,

First off, based on the frustration evident in your response, I'm sorry we've caused you such aggravation. That's clearly not our goal or intent.

The problems with ARCA have gone on too long and I agree that no ETA is not acceptable. I'll work with our Head of Engineering to make sure a time table is in place and communicated to customers.

We've now isolated the problem with stale Arca and Island quotes to the IP stack within the operating system on our Market Depth servers. We are now working on installing an IP stack from a different source and/or installing other server-side software to better handle the traffic. The connectivity between us and our sources appears to be just fine. Hopefully, we'll make good progress next week on these alterations. I'll be sure to post when we have follow-up information to pass along.

Thanks.

[ScottJ]

Stale ARCA/Island quotes in Depth Window

Users have reported a problem with ARCA and Island quotes becoming stale in Market Depth window. Our engineers are trying some new o/s utilities next week and hopefully will be able to remedy the problem fairly soon.

Several posts in another thread were dealing with this ARCA/Island issue so we've created another thread to seperate the problems and make it easier for all of us to track and discuss.

Thanks.

[MountainTrader]

In case you're wondering, the ARCA and Island books are still a total mess.

[ScottJ]

We do have good news fairly close at hand. We've now switched to the new feed for ARCA and are in the process of testing a new depth server build that should improve the processing of these quotes. We can internally connect to this new server and it performed much better today. Still not quite perfect but much better. We'll continue testing and tweaking and then start rolling out to the production farm a few at a time. If all goes well, all servers will be upgraded within a few weeks.

Thanks.

[MountainTrader]

Just wondering what the latest on the ARCA/Island data is. 7 months and counting since I first reported this problem. Are you trying to set a record?

[ScottJ]

MT,

We've made considerable progress over the past weeks and our testing is indicating those servers are performing much better. We are still seeing an occasional stale quote so our work continues but we do think the situation has improved quite a bit. What's your experience as of late?

Thanks.

[MountainTrader]

ARCA seems improved, but Island is still a complete mess. As I write this, INTC is showing Asks of 27.65 and 27.66 in the Island book - which are way below the actual Island ask of 27.82 and way below the bid for that matter.

Can I assume you understand that CLOSE is NOT good enough where a quote service is concerned? Close is just WRONG, and therefore cannot be trusted for trading.

[ScottJ]

Thanks for the additional specifics. We'll keep an eye on the Island book and have engineering do the same. As previously indicated, our work continues until the problems are 100% resolved. Most customers like to know about, and see, progress but we all understand 100% accuracy is the goal.

Thanks.

[MountainTrader]

ARCA and Island books are still an unuseable MESS. You can pat yourself on the back all you want for having "improved" the situation - but until it actually works properly it is UNUSEABLE for trading, which considering who your customers are, makes it a TOTAL JOKE. August 03 I reported these problems - 8 months and counting. VERY impressive.

This is exactly how qcharts became my FORMER data provider. I am now shopping again.

Go ahead, pat yourself on the back again and tell me all the progress being made.

[ScottJ]

We have identified the weakness in the way we have the feeds for Island and ARCA set-up w/in our dual ticker plant configuration. It's a bit complicated to explain but unlike a few months ago, we're much more confident we know where the problem lies and we're in the process of testing new lines to correct it. No specific ETA but we'll get one soon.

Thanks.

[ScottJ]

Update 5/3/04

A series of Network improvements are now in place to address the stale quote issue in the Island and Arca books. From what we can tell from our testing, the problems are now 100% resolved. Please let us know if you see otherwise.

Thanks for your patience.