As recently announced, Nasdaq is moving its Disaster Recovery (DR) site for the US equities and options markets in a phased approach from Ashburn, VA to Chicago, IL beginning in August 2015. The new DR will be located within the Equinix CH4 facility in 350 E. Cermak on the 8^th floor. In addition to offering additional geographic diversity, this new DR location also enables clients to easily connect to a broad group of other equities and options exchange DR engines as well as other asset classes in this Chicago facility.

Timeline of the Migration

Nasdaq will be moving the DR connectivity of its US markets according to the schedule below.

* There will be two UAT weekends for order entry testing prior to the production launch date. Following the launch, customers will be able to use their Chicago ports for production traffic even when Carteret is active.

As each market’s DR launch in Chicago approaches, Nasdaq will alert participants accordingly so that preparation can be made by the customers. Other Nasdaq post-trade, back office and reporting services will be moved to Chicago in early 2016.

All associated data feeds for each market is included in the migration. For an exhaustive list, see our DR Migration website.

Customers must complete the migration of their order connectivity from Ashburn to Chicago prior to the November 9^th deadline in order to maintain full DR accessibility.

During the migration of all markets from Ashburn to Chicago, Chicago will be treated as a live Point of Presence (POP) for both receiving market data as well as sending orders. Following the DR launch for each market, Chicago will be considered a “hot” site in which customers can both receive market data and send orders even when the matching engine is live in Carteret, just as Ashburn is configured today.

Network and Port IP Details

Customers will need to work with Nasdaq or their third party vendor to provision for Nasdaq’s Chicago subnet: 206.200.80.0/20. All multicast and unicast services for the six Equities and Options markets highlighted above will be contained within this network range.

Multicast market data will be configured in PIM Sparse mode in Chicago, and the Rendezvous Point for all “Chicago A” feeds will be 207.251.255.97/32. A link to the full list of market data multicast addresses can be found on our DR Migration website.

Order entry, quoting and DROP ports will be provided as needed, based on customer requests. Customers will be required to “opt-in” to receive Chicago IPs/ports. Nasdaq will provide additional detail when ordering is available via the Port Request forms.

Simplifying Connectivity

Available now, Nasdaq is offering customers direct connect capabilities to all markets and services that Nasdaq offers at both 1Gbps and 10Gbps bandwidth speeds. For customers that are co-located within the Chicago facility, or have existing telecommunication (telco) circuits terminating in the building, orders can be placed via the Nasdaq Co-Lo and Connectivity Console. Nasdaq will provide Letter of Authorizations for customers to cross-connect from their location within the building to Nasdaq in CH4.

Customers who do not have a presence in CH4 can either connect through an extranet, ISV or an Equinix approved telco provider. Clients who wish to have new dedicated telco circuits installed can contact any of these connectivity providers(note this is not an exhaustive list).

To improve efficiency, logical ports (sessions) will be provided as needed, based on customer requests.

Physical Connectivity Fees

Nasdaq is waiving physical handoff and relevant port fees for the Chicago equities and options DR connectivity until November 9, 2015 – the Ashburn order entry access shutdown date. However, customers will be liable for the associated cross-connects to our location in CH4 charged by the associated vendor (Equinix, Telx, Savvis,etc.).

Additional Information

Customers may contact Andrea Moran at +1 212-231-5162, Doug Aragones at +1 212 231 5189 or their Nasdaq relationship manager for additional details. Please also refer to the DR Migration page on our website for an updated timeline.