Connection & Testing

Thank you for your interest in trading at Montréal Exchange

Throughout the certification and connection process, the Manager of Operational and Technical Services will be your resource to answer any questions or to review the available options related to your requirements. You can reach out for support to the Technical Help Desk.

Test and certification documentation

The test and certification documentation is designed to facilitate development and certification of MX SOLA® services.

Technical specifications

If you are looking for the latest technical specifications, connect directly with the Technical Help Desk for the details.

Access to the general test environment (GTE)

The testing environment is designed to improve the client development and testing experience. Any enhancements or new features to the trading platform are first deployed on the GTE prior to Production implementation. Some of these enhancements or new features may require client certification before promotion of their application into the Production environment. Details of these enhancements or new features as well as possible requirements are available in the technical notices.

To request connectivity to the GTE, clients must request the GTE Access Form from the Technical Help Desk and email a digital copy (not scanned) of the completed form to the same address.

Hours of availability of our GTE services may vary from one service to another. The majority of services' gateways are accessible from 7:00 p.m. to 5:40 p.m. Eastern Time. If you wish to obtain the hours of a particular service's gateway, please contact the Technical Help Desk.

Technical and functional support of the GTE is only available during regular business hours (Monday to Friday, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time).

For trading simulation on the GTE, please be advised – the GTE instrument dictionary is not an exact copy of what is available in our production environment. The tradable products available on our GTE are meant to be a subset of what is in production. Trading hours and stages of these available products may also differ, however, these can be changed upon request by contacting support

Certification

The certification environment mirrors production functionality and clients can use it to perform:

• certification testing for SOLA core functionality;
• maintenance testing;
• development testing for new system features or functionality in production-like conditions.

External applications using the SAIL or the FIX protocol for order routing, ATR, Drop Copy, LOPR or the Clearing API, require certification before gaining access to the production connection. The Technical Help Desk will provide clients with required test cases and support during this phase.

Contact the Technical Help Desk to schedule an appointment when you are ready to certify.

Development support and testing

Application testing and support is available Sunday through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. ET to 4:30 p.m. ET.

MX reserves the right to deny access to the development systems for any reason at any time without notice. We recommend that clients confirm system availability with Derivative Operations.

Support during development and testing is available by contacting the Market Access Manager.

Access to the production environment

Before requesting access to the production environment, the following steps are required:

• MX approved participant status has been granted (which includes becoming a member of the Canadian Derivatives Clearing Corporation or having a clearing agreement with one of its members).
• Certification of any applications requiring certification has been granted.
• Sign-off is provided by the Manager of Operational and Technical Services.

Clients must request the TMX Service Request Form from the Technical Help Desk and return a scanned version of the completed form to the same email address.

To obtain access to the production environment, the following connections are available:

Direct connection

• MX co-location services: The SOLA Trading engine is located in Markham, Ontario along with MX co-location services to provide the opportunity for clients to optimize trading opportunities, achieve faster execution and maximize trading profits through low-latency trading and data access from within the TMX data centre.
• MX points of presence (POP): A direct connection can be made to the MX POP located in Toronto. Physical connectivity to the production network is provided by 1/10 Gb Ethernet connection. Clients are responsible for supplying the appropriate telecommunications lines and routers at the POP.

Indirect connection

• Third-party network / telecom providers: Connectivity can be obtained via the following: Beanfield, Bell, BT Radianz, Cogent, Rogers, Telus, and Zayo.

Third-party hosting providers (located in our co-location facilities):

• Borntec
• BSO
• CIBC
• Guavatech
• ICE Data Services
• Itiviti
• ITS Online
• Options IT
• Pico
• SDC
• TNS
   

• ISV network: View the full list of MX certified ISVs.

Production bandwidth requirements

Bandwidth requirements are determined by whether or not a client receives the market data feed and which information is read. The base requirement for all applications is 1.5 megabit. Refer to the following table for bandwidth required for the HSVF data feed.

Post-implementation support