Boundary switch

In trading environments, capturing timestamps close to the boundary switch is essential for measuring latency, as it reflects how quickly market data reaches a firm after leaving the exchange. For example, many high-frequency trading (HFT) firms or proprietary trading firms colocate their systems at the exchange’s data center to minimize the distance between the boundary switch and their infrastructure. This reduces network latency and allows them to act on market events as quickly as possible.

With Databento, you can extract multiple high-precision timestamps for each event, including the critical receive timestamp (ts_recv). This allows firms to monitor how quickly market data reaches their systems and optimize their latency-sensitive trading strategies.