The London Internet Exchange Preps Big Network Upgrade

The London Internet Exchange (LINX), which is a central hub for much of the Internet traffic that both comes into and goes out of the United Kingdom, has announced major plans to redevelop their secondary London interconnect platform (LON2) and give member ISPs more flexibility.

As one of the largest Internet exchanges in the world LINX, which is a mutual membership organisation, currently connects 735 networks in over 65 countries around the globe. The exchange can today handle 16.155Tb (Terabits) of connected capacity and is dealing with 3.34Tbps+ (Terabits per second) of live peak capacity. Suffice to say that LINX has a big influence.

LINX has historically chosen a dual Local Area Network (LAN) architecture, with the networks being referred to as LON1 and LON2 and spanning 11 locations across key Points of Presence (PoPs) in London. But times are changing and so LINX has decided to adopt a new architecture that it claims will offer members more choice, reliability and resilience.

The new architecture will introduce a disaggregated format to LON2, sourcing hardware from Edgecore Networks (Accton Technology Group) and software to compliment this from IP Infusion. LINX will also build the new LON2 architecture based on EVPN routing technology (Ethernet VPN), the first IXP in the world to announce this.

Richard Petrie, LINX CTO, said:

“We are very happy with this decision as it allows LINX to continue to deliver innovative technology to its members. This decision also allows us to continue our commitment to seek ever-greater levels of service quality and cost effectiveness.

By deploying this latest technology, and as the first in the world, it allows us to raise the standards even higher than before. Both Edgecore Networks and IP Infusion will support the full lifecycle product testing and IXP feature needs. They are also keen to participate in the LINX and IXP communities, which is important to us and our members.”

The new approach was predictable in the sense that all of the major players seem to have been moving steadily towards EVPN because networks are becoming more sophisticated, which is something that traditional Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS) were not ideally prepared to handle.

Never the less the shift to EVPN is no easy task and LINX has had to spend months on research and testing with new suppliers in order to get it ready for prime time, but we’re certain that more Internet Exchanges (IXP) will follow this path.