Quote from FSU:
As was mentioned earlier there is no DPM for the SPX. Instead there are several firms that rotate on a monthly basis for supplying the "Auto Quote." There is no real incentive for them to provide a tight quote as their bids and offers can be traded instantly and electronically. They will keep them wide in order to avoid being picked off.
If a broker is holding and order and puts up a quote and you try to hit that order, it will not be traded instantly. Instead the broker who you have placed the order through will have to yell out in the crowd to determine who is holding the order. He will then have to manually trade the order with the other broker. As you can imagine this could really slow things down for you. The broker must first see your order on his screen (he may have multiple orders that he is dealing with.)
If and order is placed in the "book" (electronically represented by the CBOE) it can be traded instantly and electronically, just as if you were hitting an auto quote market. There is generally no way of the average customer knowing what type of order you are seeing on the screen.
There is also a COB (complex order book) which electronically holds spread orders. A customer can place an order in the COB, but a market maker can only trade against a standing order. I have found that the market makers computers generally require very little edge to trade certain types of spreads. For instance maybe as little as .10 for a vertical.