LINX Members Benefiting from 40% Cost Savings Year-on-Year

Feb. 18, 2009 - PRLog -- In comparing year-on-year figures, many LINX members have seen fees drop by 40% since the beginning of 2008. A major contributor to this has been the range of price cuts implemented last September. At that time annual membership fees were reduced by 10 per cent and the cost of 1 GigE and 10 GigE ports across LINX’s two independent local area networks (LANs) were lowered by as much as 25%. Another factor has been the strength of the US Dollar and the Euro on currency markets.

As an example a large American content network with eight 10 Gb ports at LINX has seen prices lowered from US$30,000 per month in January last year to US$16,900 per month now. Meanwhile European access networks with two 10 Gb ports have seen their costs lowered from €5400 per month in 2008 to €3200 today.

John Souter, LINX Chief Executive Officer said: "As a neutral, not-for-profit Internet exchange we aim to pass the benefits of our growth back to our members whenever we can. It's interesting to note that whenever we lower our prices it encourages even more new members to join LINX. This in turn will allow us to offer the membership even greater savings in the future."

LINX has already received six new applications in 2009 looking to join the 52 new members who connected last year. That equated to a 20% membership increase in 12 months with more than 45 countries represented. This rise is indicative of the importance networks attach to peering despite the significant drop in transit pricing over the last decade.

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Notes to editors:

1. LINX (www.linx.net) is a mutual, not-for-profit organisation whose 300-plus members include almost all UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and content delivery service providers plus many from the Americas, mainland Europe, the Far East and Africa. Every member has an equal vote in the management of the organisation.

2. LINX was formed in 1994 when five ISPs – PIPEX, BT Internet Services, Demon Internet, EUnet GB and JANET – recognised that there were considerable operational benefits to exchanging traffic between their networks at the same tele-hotel where they all had facilities.

3. LINX has a presence at ten sites around London, all connected by secure fibre links. The extent and resiliency of the network has been further increased in 2008 with the addition of three new points of presence.

4. Connection of Internet networks at an Internet exchange point such as LINX is known as 'peering'. LINX offers members the option of establishing private one-to-one peering between networks and/or 'public peering' where traffic can potentially be exchanged with any other member linked to the exchange.

5. The Internet traffic at LINX consists of a wide variety of data including streaming media, website downloads, business information and emails. Peak LINX traffic is the equivalent of 800,000 simultaneous Internet video streams.

6. The LINX website includes a standard membership list - www.linx.net/about/memberlist.html - as well as a more detailed technical version by IP/ASN: www.linx.net/about/member-techlist.html

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LINX is a mutually owned membership association for operators of Internet Protocol networks. We provide a neutral interconnection facility and peering platform, known as an Internet Exchange Point (IXP), and represent the interests of our members on matters of public policy.