Spread Networks Chicago-to-New Jersey Financial Route
Direct 825-mile dark-fiber route blasted through the Appalachians, cutting Chicago–NJ latency to sub-13 ms
Open it on the earth: cut a link, lose a siteWorkbook (DC Sim template v1.4)
The story
Completed in 2010 at a cost of $300 million, Spread Networks' 825-mile underground fiber route was built in near-perfect straight lines, tunneling through the Allegheny and Appalachian mountains rather than following winding rail corridors or highways. The line directly connected the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) in Aurora, Illinois to the equity matching engines in Secaucus and Carteret, New Jersey. By shaving round-trip transmission time from 16.5 ms down to 12.98 ms, it ignited the modern algorithmic high-frequency trading (HFT) revolution documented in Michael Lewis's book 'Flash Boys'.
Notable
- Constructed in total secrecy between 2008 and 2010 with $300M in private funding.
- Blasted trenches through rocky Appalachian mountains to achieve the shortest geographic path.
- Cut round-trip fiber transit time between Chicago and New Jersey to an unprecedented 12.98 milliseconds.
- Acquired by Zayo Group in 2018; forms the core low-latency financial conduit for global futures and equities.
Sites
| Code | Place | Role | Provider |
|---|---|---|---|
| CME-AURORA | Aurora, IL, United States | futures-exchange | CME Group / CyrusOne |
| EQUINIX-CH1 | Chicago, IL, United States | peering-exchange | Equinix (350 E Cermak) |
| EQUINIX-NY4 | Secaucus, NJ, United States | equities-exchange | Equinix NY4 Secaucus |
| NASDAQ-CARTERET | Carteret, NJ, United States | equities-exchange | Nasdaq Carteret (1400 Federal Blvd) |
Links
| From | To | Type | Capacity | Length | Year | Protected | Est. one-way latency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CME-AURORA | EQUINIX-CH1 | terrestrial | 400 Gbps | 62 km | — | yes | 0.35 ms |
| EQUINIX-CH1 | EQUINIX-NY4 | terrestrial | 800 Gbps | 1,327 km | — | yes | 12.98 ms |
| EQUINIX-NY4 | NASDAQ-CARTERET | terrestrial | 400 Gbps | 28 km | — | yes | 0.22 ms |
Latency marked ≈ is our estimate from the great-circle distance × 1.5 at 5 µs per km, not the operator's figure.
Sources
- Zayo Completes Acquisition of Spread Networks · Zayo Group · 2018-05-01
- The 13-Millisecond Race for the Straightest Route Between Chicago and New York · Bloomberg News · 2010-09-20
- Wall Street's Speed Demons · Forbes · 2010-09-27
Part of the open famous data centers dataset (CC BY 4.0). Updated 2026-10-15.
What is Spread Networks Chicago-to-New Jersey Financial Route famous for?
Direct 825-mile dark-fiber route blasted through the Appalachians, cutting Chicago–NJ latency to sub-13 ms
How many sites and links does Spread Networks Chicago-to-New Jersey Financial Route have in this dataset?
4 sites and 3 links, of which 0 are recorded as not protected. Figures are from the public sources listed on the page.
Who operates Spread Networks Chicago-to-New Jersey Financial Route?
Zayo Group (originally Spread Networks)