There is an interesting series of blog posts about microwave towers used in HFT entitled "HFT in my backyard" at http://sniperinmahwah.wordpress.com
Several of the individual posts were submitted to HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=HFT%20in%20my%20backyard&sort=...
Thanks!
> Thanks for curating these articles from 2012!
My pleasure:) I find there is way to much secrecy around algorithmic trading, and I do what I can to shed some light on it for newbies like your self!
I was curious about microwave radio lines so I did a little digging[1]. It appears that microwave radio can double the speeds of fiber. Though the towers are limited by distance (max ~60mi separation), HFT shops buy/rent microwave tower networks connecting cities. For example, one HFT firm owns a network of ~30 microwave towers connecting NJ to IL that transmit 1.6 ms faster than fiber.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-07-24/high-frequen...