The London Internet Exchange (LINX – www.linx.net) has announced that record-breaking membership growth in the first half of 2008 has allowed it to make substantial cuts in prices for membership and for the services which members receive.

Annual membership fees have been cut by 10 per cent as have the price of 1 GigE and 10 GigE ports on one of LINX’s two independent local area networks (LANs). 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.

LINX chief executive John Souter said: “Under LINX’s mutual-ownership membership model, profits are returned to members in the form of price cuts. 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.”

LINX charges a flat rate membership fee, now set at just £2,250 per annum, to cover the costs of running the organisation, in which all members have a single vote. There is an annual charge for each port connected on the two LANs but there is no traffic charge – members are able to put as much or as little traffic through their ports as their network configurations require, without financial penalty.

LINX split its infrastructure into two separate LANs in 2002. One LAN is based on hardware supplied by Foundry Networks, the other on hardware from Extreme Networks.

John Souter said: “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.

“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.”