A year ago LINX were reporting record rates of network traffic growth, as the first anniversary of the pandemic approached. So how are things looking another year on, is it still on the rise or are we seeing online activity returning to a new normal?
In February 2021 LINX reported a 38% growth in overall network traffic when compared to the start of 2020. When the first UK lockdown commenced at the end of March 2020, LINX’s peak traffic record stood at 4.30 Terabits per second. It is now fast approaching 7Tbps with the latest peak reaching at 6.811Tbps.
Mike Hellers, Product Development Manager at LINX says: “Our growth is back to what we saw before the pandemic, but all of that happens on a higher base traffic level now. Besides the peak and average traffic levels, we are tracking a number of other metrics internally. One of those metrics is the relation between connected capacity (total capacity of all member ports) and peak traffic levels. Historically, this ratio is fairly stable and indicates how well our members manage the capacity on ingress and egress of their networks.”
While our members had enough capacity on their existing ports to handle the growth or reroute traffic where needed, the average traffic levels increased rapidly, indicated by the change in the ratio between connected capacity and traffic levels.
Throughout the last two years, we’ve seen members adding capacity with additional ports or upgrading to larger ports to catch up with the traffic growth. Still, until now, the ratio has not yet managed to reach pre-pandemic levels.
LINX CTO, Richard Petrie, was recently interviewed by our partner Nokia for a new video. This explains how both organisations worked together to bring the 400GE product to life.
Future Plans for 400GE
LINX’s future plans will centre around supporting 400GE in the core and the edge in LON1, testing and deploying 400GE in the Juniper MX10k platform and looking at the 400G transport to support traffic growth in our core especially growth in West London.
As for LON2 and the exchange networks based on our disaggregated Edgecore IP Infusion model (LON2, Manchester, NoVA), enable 400GE in the edge and the core.
If you would like to learn more about the integration of 400GE at LINX, and how your network can benefit, please contact our sales@linx.net team.
Time Running Out to Register for Virtual LINX115 Member Meeting
We would like to invite members to our upcoming virtual LINX Member Meeting – LINX115. This will take place on Tuesday 22nd February 2022 at 14:00 GMT.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, LINX115will be another virtual meeting. LINX understand how important it is to share updates with our membership, but we also know spending hours on Zoom is not what our members want, so we are keeping this meeting short with just LINX updates.
As like previous virtual member meetings, LINX115 will be a Zoom meeting instead of a webinar format. This means that people have the option to be on camera, see who is in attendance and interact with the presenters.
Teraco Virtual Tech Day with Euro-IX & Peering Toolbox
A recording of the Teraco Data Environments Tech Day session on Peering101 with Euro-IX is now available to watch again.
The session, entitled Unbox The Peering Toolbox, included a panel discussion with Euro-IX and members of the Peering Toolbox team. This featured LINX’s Head of Global Engagement, Nurani Nimpuno, Nina Bargisen, Experienced Interconnection and Internet Infrastructure leader at Kentik and Dónal Cunningham, Technical Architect at HEAnet.
If you have missed any of LINX’s live events or training sessions we make them available to watch again in our Learn with LINX section and LINX YouTube Channel.
Wednesday 23rd – Thursday 24th November 2022 (London)
If you have any questions regarding LINX events, please forward them to marketing@linx.net and we will be happy to help.
LINX Round Up
LINX Strengthens Sales Team
Justin Staig-Graham, Business Development Executive
Justin has worked has worked in sales for many years and is an excellent addition to the Sales team at LINX. Justin told us: “I’m happy to be starting a new position as a Business Development Executive at LINX. Everyone has made me feel so welcome and I look forward to working towards our objectives with respect to new markets.”
Colin Peckham, Business Development Executive
Some of you will already know Colin who joins us from LINX partner BSO, from where he brings with him a wealth of industry knowledge. Colin says: “I’m delighted to be joining the LINX team, a company that I have worked closely alongside as a partner for many years. I look forward to supporting the next stage of growth of the London Internet Exchange in 2022 and beyond!”
Colin has written a very interesting blog post that provides a valuable insight into what it means to be part of LINX Community.
NaWas deliver their DDoS protection to their customer base over the LINX network using the LINX Closed User Group service.
Frank Dupker, European Network Manager for NaWas says:“The mix of increased usage and reliance on the Internet and remote working has meant hackers have got wiser and have far more opportunities to attack. We are really pleased to be using the LINX Closed User Group service to now deliver our DDoS protection service, we can deliver a faster and improved service to our UK members.”
Public Affairs News
UK Government Strengthens Online Safety Bill
The UK Government has updated its online safety bill to clarify what constitutes “illegal content” that online platforms will be required to protect their users from. The Government has published an updated list of that content, which includes revenge porn, hate crime, fraud, the sale of illegal drugs and weapons, the promotion or facilitation of suicide, people smuggling, and sexual exploitation.
Previously, platforms would have been forced to remove such content after it had been reported to them by users but under the new legislation, they must be proactive and prevent people being exposed to it in the first place.
Ofcom will be able to issue fines of up to 10 per cent of annual worldwide turnover to non-compliant platforms or block them from being accessible in the UK.
The bill will also create three new online communications offences for individuals: sending or posting a message that conveys a threat of serious harm, sending a communication with the intent of causing psychological harm or serious emotional distress, and deliberately sending a false message with the intention of causing harm.
For more information on LINX Public Affairs please follow the link below.
If you are a LINX member and would be interested being featured in a future edition of the LINX newsletter please email us at newsletter@linx.net.
What You May Have Missed
LINX Stats Update
Last month we shared a number of statistics from across the exchange. These have been well received so we have decided to continue to update our readers each time we publish a new edition of the newsletter.
If you want to see our live stats please visit the LINX Quick Facts page.
A special preview edition for series three of the London Internet Exchange podcast, LINXcast is out now.
To kick off we look ahead to the LINX115 member meeting. We also hear from LINX Director of Legal & Policy, Malcolm Hutty, as he talks about the Telecoms Security Bill, the draft Online Harms Bill, Digital Services Regulation, and more.
If you have any ideas for a future podcast or would like to join us to discuss a topic, why not reach out to us!
