LINX stays mutual as members look to fund expansion
By Simon Marshall, Total Telecom
30 March 2001
The London Internet eXchange (LINX), the biggest Internet peering exchange in Europe, has strengthened its resolve to remain a mutual not-for-profit community driven by its 120 ISP members, rather than go commercial.
LINX now connects all colocation facilities in London on a dark fiber ring, and currently has traffic peaks growing to around 6 gigabits per second as a main Internet hub between North America and Europe.
Members including Cable & Wireless, France Telecom and PCCW have now decided that although LINX needs an imminent and sizeable hardware upgrade if it's to keep pace, the best way to fund it is likely through contributions from all, and not loans or the commercialization of a business built on trust.
"During the latter part of last year the principal concern of the membership was whether we were well funded enough," said LINX' newly appointed chief executive John Souter talking exclusively to Total Telecom.
"But we have a substantial amount of members' money on deposit because LINX has shown a small surplus each year, so now there's the fundamental question of what that's for," added Souter, appointed in February from his position as managing director of German-owned computer supplier Varetis Communications.
"We'll explore that with the members, but there's a number of capacity challenges coming up," he said. He declined to reveal the value of members' funds available for expansion.
Not only are IP traffic levels shooting up toward new highs, but thanks to a change in membership rules, the content delivery community will soon be welcomed to join Peterborough, Cambridgeshire-headquartered LINX.
Souter foresees further purchases of Layer 2 switches among other equipment from key suppliers Extreme Networks and Foundry Networks, to meet the imminent demand for 10-gigabit-per-second capacity. LINX will also phase-out obsolete Alcatel switching equipment.
In the search of improved funding, a number of options are under review, but charging for LINX services was never really one of them.
"A commercial model was put in front of the members [in February] that LINX would contract-out services for profit to another body, but that would have caused conflict with our own services, and the value of that [proposition] to the members was considered to be too low," said Souter. "I question whether unsecured loans would be a way to do it either."
"There's been mention of a bonds issue," he continued, "but the members are more than willing to finance an engineering expansion, and we're a transparent organization, so they'll see the benefit of that." He'll canvass the opinion of the best way forward from members at LINX' next general meeting in Paris in May.
Lighting the link to Telecity Exchange, the last remaining London colocation facility not already a member, will probably increase traffic levels too.
"The next step change we make will be to deploy 10 Gigabit Ethernet over our existing fiber infrastructure, and I'd speculate that the hardware [to achieve that] will be available over this summer," he said.
It looks as if Souter is pleased that LINX has remained a mutual organization. "If you bring people together in a club, they're much more likely to cooperate, and I think we've safely created an environment for competitors to talk to each other," he explained.
New LINX members pay a basic membership fee, and a separate fee to gain further ports over and above the two 100-megabit-per-second Ethernet peering ports included in basic membership.
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