September 13, 2008 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – The London Internet Exchange, or LINX (http://www.linx.net), has announced that it is reducing pricing for members. The move comes after the organization has experienced “record-breaking membership growth in the first half of 2008” allowing “cuts in prices for membership and for the services which members receive”.
LINX, has cut its annual membership fees by 10% and reduced the price of 1 GigE and 10 GigE ports on one of LINX's two independent Local Area Networks (the organization split its infrastructure into two separate LANs in 2002) for the same price. Port prices on the second LAN are being set 25 per cent lower than on the first in a bid to encourage members to link to both networks, increasing the resilience of LINX and therefore of the whole Internet.
"Under LINX's mutual-ownership membership model, profits are returned to members in the form of price cuts, explained John Souter, Chief Executive of LINX. “The cuts we have announced are fully offset by the growth in our membership since January. We have already connected 39 new members in 2008 and are confident of many more joining before the end of the year."
"We have decided to make the port prices on our Extreme LAN even more attractive to try to balance the connected capacity, traffic and routes available across the two LANs,” added Mr. Souter. "We develop and maintain two separate LANs with equipment from two different switch vendors as part of our approach to resilience, a vital aspect of good management of an Internet exchange like LINX. These are a safeguard against the unlikely event of both LANs suffering simultaneous problems attributable to our vendors. This architecture also promotes healthy vendor competition. Operating two local area networks also means we have resilience in the event of non-vendor-related problems on either LAN permitting us to maintain service if we need to take elements of one of the LANs out of operation for upgrading or service work. We encourage our members to take ports on both LANs because it provides them with the same resilience."
