Re: Emergeny calls
“And why does SCADA, DCS, etc need gigabits/second to poll its RTUs in pumping stations or whatever? Sometimes those things need very low (or at least very predictable) latency, and the need to packetize serial data into IP packets can get in the way. IP is trendy though.”
Who said you needed to buy gigabit links? They are a available if you want them, but lower speeds are available. Yes, there is more overhead compared to simple fixed links, but packets can contain small blocks of data if responsiveness is key.
“Figures. Like a parallel universe, where for some weird reason switching from message parsing in software to message parsing in (e.g.) FPGA to save a millisecond or so ”
Now you’re demonstrating your own ignorance. You’re talking about High Frequency Trading, which normally co-locates hardware in the exchange data centre and connects to their core network. Any leased line is extremely short (between two routers in a rack).
I was talking about near real time reporting and recording, where a single exchange can produce hundreds of thousands of messages per second, which needed to be converted to a standard format and merged with the converted message traffic for all other supported exchanges. Industrial quantities of data here.