OPRA is projecting that options trading firms will need capacity to handle 5 million messages per second by 2012 – pretty crazy.  This is also the first time OPRA quoted bandwidth requirements in gigabits rather than megabits.

Regulatory change – such as a transaction tax or “speed bumps” inserted into the execution process – may be the only “wild card” that could slow message rate growth, says Kevin McPartland, senior analyst at Tabb Group, who expects bandwidth demand to grow apace.

Opra projects that firms will need 0.97 Gigabits per second (Gbps) of bandwidth by January 2011 and 1.22 Gbps by January 2012 to handle its feed of US options quote and trade data, which will be “the first time that a one-Gigabit connection between, for example, New York and Chicago would be insufficient to handle peak options traffic – and that will push the option of 10-Gig Ethernet even faster,” McPartland says.

Full story at WatersTechnology.com