LINX Membership
Increases, Exchange Traffic Swells

Founded in 1994, the London-based Internet exchange known as LINX has helped to push European traffic levels upward to new record heights.

by ISP-Planet Staff [August 19, 2002]

An Internet Exchange (IX) acts as a junction between multiple points of Internet presence. Peering partners are able to directly connect to each other to exchange local Internet traffic. Typically the IX owns and operates the switching platforms used to interconnect the various users or subscribers.

While most U.S. ISPs are familiar with MAE East and MAE West, currently operated by the financially fraught WorldCom, or the Palo Alto Internet Exchange known as PAIX, some larger service providers and search engines have augmented European data transfer rates by signing up with Internet exchanges located overseas.

The London Internet Exchange Ltd. (LINX) currently handles up to 96 percent of U.K. Internet traffic. The neutral, not-for-profit Internet exchange processes packet volumes in excess of 16 Gigabits per second—equivalent to nearly 1 million average-sized e-mail messages per second. Naturally, this makes LINX a hit with U.S. firms seeking to shore up services overseas.

As a mutual organization owned by more than 120 ISPs and content delivery providers, LINX allows competing networks to exchange Internet traffic cost-effectively, bringing speed and efficiency benefits to their customers. Its members include most major U.K. ISPs, plus many from the U.S., along with dot-com companies in mainland Europe and the Far East.

According to LINX, the peering agent is currently carrying more than twice as much traffic as the next largest European exchange, affirming its position as the largest Internet exchange point outside the U.S. With traffic levels at the Internet exchange more than doubled over the past year, LINX has taken a leading role in adopting new technologies, such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet, to ensure that its capacity grows fast enough to keep up with demand.

Vanessa Evans, LINX sales and marketing manager, said more than a dozen new Internet service providers joined the Internet exchange this year, including several overseas ISPs.

"The acceptance of a growing number of overseas companies as members reinforces LINX's leading status in the global Internet infrastructure," Evans said. "The LINX operating structure is now being imitated in other countries."

Evens added that new members continue to join LINX at the rate of around two each month, but consolidation in the Internet industry means that the total number of members remains relatively static.

"The combined effects of the increase in Internet traffic handled by existing members and the continued expansion of our membership base means we are now handling twice as much data as we were less than a year ago," Evans said.

New U.S. members include America Online and Williams Communications Group. New members from the U.K. include Host Europe Internet, Plusnet, Griffin Internet, DHMS, Star Internet and UK2.net. The most recent European members include Sonera of Finland and RDSnet from Romania, to name just a few.

LINX members also include six of the ten most popular search engines and Web portals. Microsoft joined LINX in 2000, followed by Yahoo and Lycos in 2001. According to recent independent research cited by LINX, these firms account for more than half of the searches carried out by domestic Internet users in the U.K.

— End