ticktracer

ticktracer is a simple Python application that allows you to trace your latency to crypto exchanges, and was developed to run on Alibaba Cloud ECS and analyze the shortest latency for exchanges hosted on Alibaba Cloud. However, any cloud provider can be used.

When the machine running ticktracer and the target exchange use the same NTP service, we can safely assume that the any clock skew between the two instances is negligible. If your instance has chronyc installed, you can verify the time synchronization status of the machine through the command chronyc sources.

Currently only websocket data feed latency can be extracted. It works by establishing a websocket connection to a crypto exchange API endpoint, decrypting the session with Wireshark, and comparing the arrival timestamp of packets with the payload timestamps provided by the exchange itself. Packet timestamps are received by libpcap from the kernel and are not generated by ticktracer itself, unlike other projects. See here for more information.

Supported Exchanges

• Binance
• Bybit
• OKX

Requirements

Ticktracer has been tested on the following operating systems:

• macOS >= 14.0
• Debian >= 12.0
• Ubuntu >= 22.0

In addition, the following external dependencies are required:

• wireshark or tshark >= 4.0.7
• libssl-dev for Debian-based systems or openssl for MacOS

Installation

MacOS

Install dependencies

brew install wireshark openssl

Install ticktracer with pipx (recommended)

brew install pipx
pipx ensurepath
pipx install ticktracer

Install ticktracer with pip

Install ticktracer with pip:

python3 -m pip install ticktracer

Linux (Debian)

Install dependencies

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y tshark libssl-dev

Install ticktracer with pipx (recommended)

sudo apt install pipx
pipx ensurepath
pipx install ticktracer

Install ticktracer with pip

python3 -m pip install ticktracer

Root permissions

Note that Wireshark requires the user to either have root privileges or to be part of the wireshark group in order to trace packets. To enable non-root access to wireshark, run the following command and select yes:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure wireshark-common

To add your user to the wireshark group, run the following command:

sudo adduser <YOUR-USER> wireshark

Create a new session in your terminal, and verify that you are part of the wireshark group with the following command:

groups

Automated environments

For automated environments, like a userdata script, use the following commands to install wireshark:

export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
apt update && apt install -y libssl-dev tshark

Usage

usage: ticktracer [-h] -e EXCHANGE -p PAIR -d DURATION [-i INTERFACE]

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -e, --exchange_id {okx,binance,bybit}
                        The exchange to connect with.
  -p, --pair PAIR       The trading pair to monitor. Look up the specific format on the exchange's API documentation.
  -d, --duration DURATION
                        Duration in seconds to monitor.
  -i, --interface INTERFACE
                        The network interface to listen on. Default is eth0 for Linux or en0 for macOS.

Example: ticktracer -e okx -p BTC/USDT -d 60

After the monitoring duration has elapsed, the script will output the latency in milliseconds across different percentiles:

Total samples taken: 11567
Latency report:
+------------+-------------------------+
| Percentile | Latency in milliseconds |
+------------+-------------------------+
|    MIN     |          3.104          |
|    25%     |          9.151          |
|    50%     |          10.401         |
|    75%     |          11.762         |
|    90%     |          13.08          |
|    95%     |          14.102         |
|    99%     |          19.474         |
|   99.9%    |          32.975         |
|    MAX     |          48.023         |
+------------+-------------------------+