All major UK ISPs including Spitfire and many European and International ISPs are members of LINX, the world's largest independent IP exchange. Internet exchanges are where ISPs hand over traffic to each other through what are known as peering agreements. Spitfire has set up peering agreements with many other ISPs and content providers such as Google, the BBC and Microsoft. Being connected to LINX reduces the number of hops that traffic has to take to reach its destination which increases download speeds to users and also adds resilience to Spitfire's own network.
Commenting on the LINX upgrade, Graham Lewis, General Manager for Spitfire IP Network Engineering said, “The amount of traffic we pass across LINX has grown steadily since we joined but since the start of this year the rate of growth has increased. We put this down to the success of LINX in attracting more service providers from across the World in addition to large content providers continuing to join its peering network. LINX membership used to be mainly about lowering transit costs but now getting good quality routes with low latency is just as important to us. In addition LINX's dual-LAN infrastructure adds to our network resilience. Membership of LINX also helps us keep up to date with regulatory issues that affect the Internet.”