The London Internet Exchange (LINX) has announced the completion of a large project refreshing its 17-site interconnected network in London, with Nokia being selected as the technical partner to support this.
LON2 is LINX’s secondary interconnection fabric in London and operates in parallel with their primary LON1 LAN to provide their members with enhanced network resilience, redundancy, and architectural diversity.
The refresh is a strategic investment in the future of interconnection services in the UK and comes at a time where the existing technical solution was reaching end of life.
LON2 was originally launched in 2002 following LON1’s increasing popularity and was created to ensure there was no critical single point of failure in the UK’s internet connectivity. LINX’s dual LAN infrastructure design in London has been something that sets them apart over the years from other Internet Exchange Points. Operating a redundant, diverse and resilient solution in house for their members means not having to look elsewhere for this critical capability. In 2018 LINX announced that they were the world’s first IXP to deploy a disaggregated network using EVPN, with hardware and software sourced from alternative vendors.
LINX’s LON1 network moved to Nokia technology in 2021 following the demand for 400GE port access from members. LON2 has traditionally been a vendor diverse LAN, however the decision to also move LON2 to Nokia technology followed a series of proof of concepts (PoCs) with a shortlist of possible vendors.
Richard Petrie, LINX CTO comments:
“The LON2 refresh is a cornerstone of our strategy to deliver resilient, scalable, and cost-effective interconnection. Nokia’s platform not only meets our technical requirements but also supports our long-term vision for a diverse and robust network ecosystem.”
“When looking for a new technical partner for LON2 we had criteria we needed to meet including being able to support all our interconnection solutions, be able to support EVPN and also capable to scale from 10GE to 100GE, 400GE and even 800GE port options for the future.”
LON2 remains fully diverse for LINX members as it uses different hardware and software to LON1.
Richard continues:
“Diversity to LON1 was still a crucial element for us in the decision-making process. Many of our members take complete mirrored infrastructure and LINX services on LON1 and LON2 for resilience and redundancy so diversity was non-negotiable.”
Paul Alexander, Vice President and Country General Manager UK&I at Nokia, added:
“LINX’s networks are critical to the UK’s digital infrastructure. Its continued trust in Nokia to provide high-performance, flexible and advanced connectivity across both of its UK networks demonstrates a shared commitment to resilience, innovation and long-term scale. As AI becomes the dominant workload shaping modern networks, service providers and critical infrastructure operators need platforms that are ready for new traffic patterns, higher performance and greater scale. This investment helps ensure LINX’s members benefit from a future-ready foundation for the AI era, supporting growing capacity demands across 100GE, 400GE and beyond.”
LINX is now working with Nokia as a technical partner in most of its operating regions from LINX NoVA in the US, to LINX sites in Kenya and Ghana.
With LON2 approaching 25 years in operation next year, and so close to that 1Tb traffic mark it remains a key point of interconnection for the UK and Europe and a cost-effective way to access LINX services in London.