London Internet Exchange
The London Internet Exchange ("LINX") is an Internet Exchange Point situated in London. It was founded in 1994 by a group of Internet Service Providers, and is the world's largest IXP, both in quantity of traffic and accessible routes. As Europe's oldest and largest neutral peering point, LINX provides links to many external internet exchanges, such as INEX in Ireland.
LINX prides itself in the fact that almost half of the total internet routing table is available by peering at LINX.
In August 2004, LINX announced its intention to take action against spammer run websites, as well as websites advertised through spam. The plan also includes a crackdown on sites selling spammer tools, such as email address lists.
Technology
LINX operates two physically separate networks or switching platforms on different architectures using equipment from different manufacturers (Extreme Networks and Foundry Networks). These networks are deployed over six locations, each connected by multiple 10 Gigabit Ethernet connections over fibre networks.
The six locations are:
- Telehouse North
- Telehouse East
- TeleCity Harbour Exchange
- TeleCity Millharbour
- Redbus Interhouse Harbour Exchange
- Redbus Interhouse Sovereign House
- Redbus Meridian Gate
Redundancy of the network is managed using rapid-failover protection mechanisms. These restore connectivity within tenths of a second in the event of the loss of a network segment.