Alright Def, I have sent a formal inquiry to the Eurex asking for a comment on last nights outage. Lets see what they have to say about this situation. Specifically, I asked why one broker (Man) was able to transact when others (IB for instance) claim that connection to the exchange was down, preventing the broker from obtaining any information for a period of approximately 10 minutes. I will be interested to hear the explanation.
If the exchange is still up, then a good broker should be able to call Eurex directly and pull orders resting at the exchange. My clearing firm does that even when all their lines are down (which is rare but has happened once or twice). There is no reason why any other firm should not also be able to call Eurex direct and pull orders - regardless of whether their method of exchange access is working or not.
We have been trading Eurex for years and the data seems pretty stable. I think when you use systems like IB and PATS with so many users there could be a problem.