Betfair secures automated trading

Online betting firm shapes its data to boost traffic management capability

Written by Lisa Kelly

Betfair has to deal with automated trading applications, legitimate pieces of software that hit the site with hundreds of requests per second.

Chief technology officer Rorie Devine says the site needs shaping and mitigation capability to make sure it can manage traffic.

Networking specialist DataPower is, therefore, providing data shaping technology for Betfair.

‘We are very happy to take automated trading programs through our application programming interface, but every response to a request is a cost. We want to make sure that the traffic profile is within the bands of which we want to receive it – where it is economic,’ says Devine.

He says Betfair is less keen on screen-scraping robots, software which gathers and aggregates data from web sites and creates high volumes of traffic that affects servers.

‘We want to be able to look at what automated trading programs are trying to do, how often they are trying to do it, and at their usage pattern,’ says Devine.

He says they have nothing in common with denial of service (DoS) attacks, aimed at bringing a web site down.

‘They are mostly automated agents sitting in a tier one ISP. Such programs will not receive a 404 error message, though. The worst case is they may receive a slightly delayed response,’ says Devine.

Managing traffic is nothing new to Betfair. It already manages spikes, created by punters betting simultaneously, using Citrix Netscaler network appliances.

The organisation also handles applications requests with additional compression and load balancing, queuing each request in the pipeline to make sure that no one is turned away in peak traffic periods.

‘Not many sites can handle two billion page requests a week. We want to make sure we are getting value for money from our hardware,’ says Devine.

And by deploying data shaping technology, Betfair has analysed that it can push out new investment plans for some of its infrastructure.

reader comments

related articles

 

Citrix outlines roadmap to service-oriented IT

Consumerisation of IT is the way forward, says Citrix 16 Jun 2009

Malware heats up in July

Google logs major spike in activity 14 Aug 2008

Citrix updates XenServer and Essentials management suite

XenServer 5.5 available now along with Essentials 5.5 for XenServer and Hyper-V 06 May 2009

related whitepapers

today's top stories

How to maximise the value of your IT networking investment

A panel of experts discuss networking strategies that deliver real value to business 03 Jul 2009

Habitat gets a web site makeover

The furniture retailer is revamping its online presence to provide a fully transactional web site. CIO Jacques Dekock explains why 02 Jul 2009

Government aims to bolster UK's cyber defences

Is the UK’s first national cyber security strategy up to the task of co-ordinating the country’s response to digital threats? Computing investigates 02 Jul 2009

Focus resources on what really matters

IT has become too caught up in the drive for efficiency, at the expense of business success 02 Jul 2009

From tracks man to tax man

Phil Pavitt, outgoing chief information officer for Transport for London, talks to Rosalie Marshall about the lessons he will take to his new role at HMRC 02 Jul 2009

Advertisement

Newsletter signup

Sign up for our range of FREE newsletters:

More available - click 'submit' to view

Existing User

Newsletter user login:

Advertisement

Jobs

Related jobs

Job of the week

Job alerts

Sign up here

Find your next job

IT Salary Checker

Check salary here

Advertisement

White papers

Search white papers

Top categories

VPN, Extranet and Intranet Solutions

WAN/ LAN Solutions

Network Security

Interoperability-Connectivity

Grid/ Utility Computing

Latest poll

Would you use social networking sites to look for a job?

Would you use social networking sites to look for a job?

Tell us what you think about job hunting through LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc

View poll results

Latest audio and video articles

network cablesVideo

How to maximise the value of your IT networking investment

A panel of experts discuss networking strategies that deliver real value to business 03 Jul 2009

green footprintsVideo

How to manage enterprise energy use - and the role IT can play

A panel of experts explore how firms can get to grips with their carbon footprint and make smarter use of energy 01 Jul 2009

Latest in-depth articles

Phil PavittAnalysis

From tracks man to tax man

Phil Pavitt, outgoing chief information officer for Transport for London, talks to Rosalie Marshall about the lessons he will take to his new role at HMRC 02 Jul 2009

UPS worker making a deliveryAnalysis

Global standardisation delivers benefits at UPS

Delivery giant sees benefits of central IT solution 02 Jul 2009

Advertisement

Primary Navigation