Monitoring network packets at picosecond granularity provides new insights
Arista Networks has released audited tests, proving the accuracy and capacity of their network monitoring solutions. Arista MetaWatch, running on the Arista 7130 L-series platform, provides customers with new insight into the behavior of critical network systems, enabling trading firms to optimize performance and exchanges to validate market fairness.
The results were independently audited and verified by the highly respected Securities Technology Analysis Center (STAC®). The audited STAC-TS™ results confirm a maximum total difference in the time measured between any of the 47 ports of 376 ps. When two devices were synchronized, the worst-case total error between any two of the 94 ports was 799 ps — less than one billionth of a second. For comparison, light travels less than 2 inches (5 cm) in fiber in 376 ps.
The Arista MetaWatch application for the 7130 L-series converges tapping, timestamping and aggregation, allowing extremely precise timestamping with non-blocking bandwidth and a 32GB buffer.
“The port synchronization accuracy across two devices was the highest of anything we’ve tested, and a single device was able to capture bursts of 470Gbps for up to half a second,” said Peter Lankford, Executive Director of STAC.
“MetaWatch is a huge leap forward for network timestamping accuracy in low latency environments,” said Dr. David Snowdon, Director of Engineering at Arista Networks. “By capturing every packet on a large number of ports, without a performance impact, financial trading firms can far better understand the behavior of their trading systems.”
Key Features
MetaWatch enables firms to understand the behavior of their networks, enabling Exchanges to be fair, traders to be performant, and regulators to be confident in their observance. It provides the following advantages over other network timestamping solutions:
- Extremely precise timestamps
- Integrated tapping using Layer 1 switching
- Very large buffers of 32GB
- Traffic rate shaping and flow control
Availability
The Arista 7130 L-Series devices are available now and used in production environments by the world’s leading financial services firms. Arista is presenting at Global STAC Live on June 2nd and will conduct virtual demos.
For detailed test information and further results, please find the audited STAC Report™ here:
www.STACresearch.com/ARI200518
Numbers in this press release were taken from the results reported in the STAC Report™ linked above.
- 376 ps is taken from the summed skew and random error components of STAC-TS.PSE1.TOTAL
- 799 ps is taken from the the summed skew and random error components of STAC-TS.PSE2.TOTAL
“STAC” and all STAC names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the Securities Technology Analysis Center, LLC.
About Arista Networks
Arista Networks pioneered software-driven, cognitive cloud networking for large-scale datacenter and campus environments. Arista’s award-winning platforms redefine and deliver availability, agility, automation, analytics, and security. Arista has shipped more than twenty million cloud networking ports worldwide with CloudVision and EOS, an advanced network operating system. Committed to open standards across private, public and hybrid cloud solutions, Arista products are supported worldwide directly and through partners.
ARISTA, EOS and CloudVision, are among the registered and unregistered trademarks of Arista Networks, Inc. in jurisdictions around the world. Other company names or product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Additional information and resources can be found at www.arista.com.
About Prozeta
Prozeta is a leading Czech technology company operating in foreign markets in the EMEA and CIS regions. For more than 25 years, Prozeta has provided services worldwide in the areas of telecommunications, IoT, data centers, and the cloud. Prozeta is a distributor of Arista Networks for 29 countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Asia, a partner of Intel, and has achieved the ISO 9001 Quality Management Certificate and ISO 27001 Information Security Certificate. Prozeta uniquely combines expert knowledge in the area of networking hardware with telecommunications infrastructure and service operation.
