Summary

  • LINX publishes both service prices and financial accounts. Its London network offers a more useful story than an apparent clash between two headline traffic records.
  • Buying resilience means examining the route into the exchange as well as the exchange itself. A second connection earns its keep when the first one fails.

One of the smallest numbers on the London Internet Exchange website is also one of the most revealing: £100 a month. That is the published membership fee for its UK exchanges. It includes a first 10GE port and a first eligible service of up to 4Gbps. More services and more bandwidth cost extra. The price list, checked on 20 October 2026, separates membership, port access and service charges.

The distinction matters before a cable is connected. A port's interface speed is not the same thing as the service bought over it, and neither tells a network operator which traffic it will exchange with its peers. A cheap entry point can be useful without being a complete connectivity budget.

LINX brings networks together so they can exchange traffic directly. A member is buying access to that meeting place, but also joining the institution that maintains it. The interesting question is how those two roles fit together: what the member pays for today, what the institution invests for tomorrow, and what happens when the connection stops working.

London's second network has a job of its own

LINX runs two London exchange networks, LON1 and LON2. Its LON2 description lists 17 London locations and more than 290 connected networks. It also says LON2 uses different hardware and software from LON1. That is a more specific proposition than simply putting a second port on an order.

Different equipment can reduce exposure to a fault shared by one product or software stack. It does not, by itself, separate a customer's two access circuits. If both circuits use the same duct, a single excavation could still cut both. That is a hypothetical failure mechanism, not a reported LINX incident.

For the buyer, the boundary matters. LINX can describe its exchange architecture; the member also has to understand the carrier route, building entry and equipment between that architecture and its own network. Two invoices are not proof of two independent paths.

LON2 is carrying substantial traffic, not merely waiting for trouble elsewhere. In a 15 September announcement, LINX reported a 1Tbps peak on LON2, almost 9.8Tbps on LON1 and more than 13Tbps across its exchanges. It described a refresh of all 17 LON2 sites using Nokia IXR equipment and SR Linux, with 400GE capability.

Those are the operator's figures. They establish what LINX announced, not independently measured service quality at a particular member's port.

The traffic record was not a contradiction

The LINX homepage displays 13Tbps and more than 900 member networks. Earlier, Advanced Television reported on 27 January that LINX had recorded a 12.069Tbps aggregate peak across exchanges in four regions, amid football-related demand.

There is a dated September announcement supporting the later, larger headline. The two figures are not an unexplained conflict. Nor can subtracting one from the other produce a reliable growth estimate: comparable measurement times, scope and methods would be needed for that.

A record can attract attention while answering the wrong purchasing question. A member does not receive a fraction of the exchange-wide peak. It needs the networks it wants to reach, at the location it can use, on terms and routes suited to its traffic.

The member count, port speed and observed traffic each help describe the exchange. They are not substitutes for one another. A large gathering of networks creates potential connections; the useful ones still have to work for the individual member.

The accounts show cash moving as well as a loss

The legal entity is LONDON INTERNET EXCHANGE LIMITED, company number 03137929. Companies House records it as a company limited by guarantee without share capital. Its filing history includes the 2025 group accounts, filed on 25 June 2026.

Those filed accounts report revenue of £22.65 million and an after-tax deficit of about £349,000. The cash-flow statement nevertheless shows £2.25 million of net operating cash inflow, alongside roughly £2.96 million spent buying tangible and intangible assets.

A loss and positive operating cash flow describe different aspects of the same year. Neither can stand in for the other. Nor does the group investment total reveal how much paid for a particular London upgrade.

This changes the financing question. There are accounts to examine, rather than a financial blank to fill with assumptions. The continuing test is whether recurring cash generation and available funding can support renewal, expansion and members' expectations about price. One year's positive operating cash flow does not settle that question indefinitely.

A customer with a vote

LINX's governance arrangements give members a say through policy votes and director elections. Six elected directors form a board majority; two are elected each May. Its current Membership Agreement is not individually negotiable.

That combination is easy to miss. Membership offers a route to collective decisions, not a promise that every buyer can rewrite the standard agreement. A network seeking a change may need to distinguish a service discussion from a proposal for the membership as a whole.

There is an unavoidable tension here, though not evidence of a present dispute. Members benefit from lower charges now. They also benefit from an exchange that can replace equipment and carry more traffic later. The same organization has to decide how much to spend on each ambition.

The £100 entry fee is therefore the beginning of the story, not the verdict on value. The fuller test comes after a member has chosen its peers, paid for its service and built the route into the exchange. When one connection fails, can the traffic still get through?

Correction and retained reference

Updated 20 October 2026: the earlier version wrongly treated unsuccessful retrievals as evidence of inadequate disclosure and overlooked the dated September traffic announcement. This version corrects that reasoning using published prices and filed accounts. The original syndicated upgrade reference is retained, but the network details above rely on LINX's directly accessible material.