Technical Notice

OTC Reporting Facility (ORF) TDDS 2.1 Production Parallel Testing

November 02, 2022

On December 5, 2022, FINRA will re- platform the OTC Reporting Facility (ORF) to a new Linux-based operating system. This will include Trade Data Dissemination Service (TDDS) protocol changes FINRA previously announced.

A TDDS parallel production test period will run from Monday, November 7, 2022, through Friday, December 2, 2022.  During this period both TDDS 2.0 multicast and TDDS 2.1 (MOLD/UDP) will concurrently broadcast weekday OTC equities securities transaction production data, and FINRA invites TDDS data recipients to process the TDDS 2.1 data feed for comparison to the current TDDS 2.0 feed.

FINRA does not recommend using TDDS 2.1 data for presentation into client data feed engines until December 5, 2022.

TDDS 2.1 Protocol and Retransmissions

The FINRA Over-the-Counter Reporting Facility (ORF) will use the MOLD/UDP 64 transmission protocol as the communications interface for the data feed. MOLD/UDP 64 will replace the current non-interactive simplex mode using Internet Protocol (IP). Additionally, client retransmission capability to retrieve data packets will be automated via the use of dedicated unicast addresses.

TDDS 2.1 Message Header and Data Content

Message Header: The Message Header has been modified to 35 bytes.

  • The timestamp includes fractional seconds (nanoseconds). The Date/Time field is 23 bytes.
  • The Session Identifier and Retransmission Requester fields commonly included in the Message Header are included in the MOLD/UDP 64 message protocol layer.
  • The Message Sequence Number is included in the MOLD/UDP 64 message protocol layer.
  • The Message Sequence Number field is renamed “Trade Identifier” and is 8 bytes. The Trade Identifier is used for tracking trades and is unique per session.

Control Messages

  • Line Integrity, Sequence Number Reset, and End of Retransmission Control messages are included in the MOLD/UDP 64 message protocol layer.
  • Start of Day, End of Day, End of Trade Reporting, and End of Transmissions are disseminated once.

Data Messages

  • The Date/Time field is 23 bytes.
  • The Original Message Sequence Number field in the Cancel and Correction messages are renamed to “Original Trade Identifier”.

Network Communications

New Ports and Multicast Addresses are employed for MOLD/UDP 64. FINRA will continue to offer TDDS data via Primary A and Primary B groups (NY Metro; Carteret), and TDDS clients are encouraged to process both groups. In addition, FINRA has employed Disaster Recovery groups to be utilized in the event of catastrophic failure encountered at the data centers. FINRA encourages TDDS clients to also be prepared to process the Disaster Recovery groups.

Please contact FINRA Product Management or call (866) 899-2107 with questions regarding this notice.