[re-thc]

> This is a lot harder to do when a server is virtualized somewhere on some rack on EC2.

There are bare metal EC2 instances.

[checker659]

It's about the interconnect and the proximity.

[blibble]

and not having a for() loop doing multicast fanout in software

which sounds like what AWS Transit Gateway is

[Shrezzing]

At some point, someone has the shortest route connecting to the exchange's bare metal EC2 instance, and that organisation has a significant advantage in high frequency trading.