Deutsche Börse is going to run a high precision time synchronization pilot project using the White Rabbit protocol. The aim of this project is to determine whether White Rabbit is a feasible alternative addition to the current PTP time synchronization protocol.
White Rabbit was initially developed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. White Rabbit is a fully deterministic Ethernet-based network for general-purpose data transfer and time synchronization. White Rabbit provides sub-nanosecond accuracy and picoseconds precision of synchronization.
Deutsche Börse uses White Rabbit internally to synchronize all network capture and timestamping devices in the co-location 2.0 network. Timestamps taken by those devices are the basis for the "High Precision Timestamps Daily File Service (HPT file)", see http://datashop.deutsche-boerse.com/High-precision-timestamp. Thus, the White Rabbit time service allows customers to synchronize their clocks to the same time source used by Deutsche Börse for the timestamps in the HPT file.
White Rabbit requires additional 1 GBit/s single-mode fibre cross-connects. These cross-connects are different from the cross-connects used for the regular co-location 2.0 connectivity. The White Rabbit cross-connects will therefore terminate on separate patch-panels in the customer racks. White Rabbit uses a single fibre strand for both directions (TX and RX). The SFPs use different wavelengths for each direction, see https://www.ohwr.org/projects/white-rabbit/wiki/SFP. The White Rabbit switches at Deutsche Börse’s side use Axcen Photonics AXGE-3454-0531 [OLT] (violet) SFPs. We have successfully tested with matching AXGE-1254-0531 [ONU] (blue) on the customer side.
Since Monday, 16 July 2018 Trading Participants can order the required cross-connects in the Member Section. Eurex has started to disseminate the high-precision time signal since Monday, 20 August 2018. The pilot Project did run until 31 March 2019. Since 1 April 2019 Eurex offers this service permanently.
If you have any questions please contact us at cts@deutsche-boerse.com.
