Case study: OKX cuts inter-cloud latency to 2 ms with Zenlayer Cloud Networking

By Zenlayer | November 06, 2023

Key points

* Reduced end-to-end latency between clouds to 2 milliseconds, greatly boosting network stability
* Simplified operations and maintenance via cloud-only deployments without the need for have last-mile buildouts
* Improved flexibility with scalable leased-line capacity and customizable access methods
* Increased accessibility via Zenlayer’s pre-connected resources, which provides data-center grade high availability

About the Client

Industry: Internet finance
Needs: Public cloud interconnection, network performance stabilization
Zenlayer services used: Cloud Networking, Cloud Connect

Founded in 2017, OKX is one of the largest cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world. OKX provides a variety of digital asset trading services that include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, EOS, as well as other leading digital currencies and supports leveraged, futures, options, and other trading methods.

In addition to these services, OKX also actively promotes the investment, development, and application of blockchain technology and projects, and is committed to supporting digital currency innovations worldwide. OKX’s business mainly focuses on Hong Kong and the United States.

The Challenge: Bringing network performance up to speed for real-time financial transactions

OKX initially deployed its workloads as single-load instances. As they expanded their services, they needed to improve their local coverage and reduce disruptions caused by system migrations. As a result, the company transitioned to a multi-cloud cluster deployment with workloads distributed to Alibaba Cloud and AWS.

Their previous public VPN multi-cloud solution had limited delivery efficiency and substantial inter-cloud latency. Given the large-volume, real-time demands of financial transaction services like high concurrency, substantial bandwidth, and low latency, OKX grew concerned over potential customer abandonment due to unreliable service quality and needed a solution to improve network stability.

As public clouds don’t offer direct connections to each other due to competition, OKX faced the costly, time-consuming challenge of deploying on-premises equipment for separate connections to Alibaba Cloud and AWS. The other route was sourcing an established, third-party provider that could streamline their setup to reduce the lead time for infrastructure construction and resource costs-like Zenlayer.

Reducing latency and packet loss by 50%

After OKX shared the regions and availability zones where their cloud workloads are hosted, Zenlayer designed a Cloud Connect solution based on local Alibaba Cloud/AWS access points and their existing interconnection capacity.

Zenlayer established a highly scalable, adaptable, high-bandwidth private connection for OKX that operates using pre-connected ports in both Hong Kong and the East U.S. region, with enough capacity for future expansions of up to 10 Gbps per inter-cloud connection.

This solution enables OKX to synchronize its high-frequency trading data in real-time across public clouds using Zenlayer’s multi-cloud network, reducing latency and packet loss by 50% compared to traditional public virtual private network (VPN) connections.

Simplifying operations and minimizing lead time

Zenlayer’s robust global backbone network gives OKX the flexibility to add access methods as needed, including data centers, public clouds, and software-defined networks (SD-WANs). In addition, the solution was delivered with a highly available architecture, offering flexible line backup solutions for increased reliability.

This holistic approach ensures seamless management of the entire enterprise-level network and eliminates the need to deploy on-premises equipment, reducing the lead time for each cloud-to-cloud interconnection by up to four weeks.

Looking ahead

Going forward, OKX will self-provision ultra-low latency private line services via zenConsole to interconnect their resources between Hong Kong, Singapore, and Tokyo. Zenlayer will continue to provide live technical support and guidance as needed to help maximize OKX’s network performance to deliver the best possible user experience.

Maximize the value of your service with Zenlayer

Zenlayer’s Cloud Networking, Cloud Connect, and local expertise helped OKX drastically improve the performance of their trading platform while simplifying their enterprise networking operation and maintenance.

If you’re looking to expand your company’s global footprint, improve experiences for users, or accelerate apps or services, talk to a Zenlayer solution expert today!

For the fastest service, check out zenConsole — our self-service platform that lets you deploy around the world in minutes.

Originally published at https://www.zenlayer.com.