In comparing year-on-year figures, many LINX members have seen fees drop by 40% since the beginning of 2008. A major contributor to this has been the range of price cuts implemented last September. At that time annual membership fees were reduced by 10 per cent and the cost of 1 GigE and 10 GigE ports across LINX’s two independent local area networks (LANs) were lowered by as much as 25%. Another factor has been the strength of the US Dollar and the Euro on currency markets.
As an example a large American content network with eight 10 Gb ports at LINX has seen prices lowered from US$30,000 per month in January last year to US$16,900 per month now. Meanwhile European access networks with two 10 Gb ports have seen their costs lowered from €5400 per month in 2008 to €3200 today.
John Souter, LINX Chief Executive Officer said: "As a neutral, not-for-profit Internet exchange we aim to pass the benefits of our growth back to our members whenever we can. It's interesting to note that whenever we lower our prices it encourages even more new members to join LINX. This in turn will allow us to offer the membership even greater savings in the future."
LINX has already received six new applications in 2009 looking to join the 52 new members who connected last year. That equated to a 20% membership increase in 12 months with more than 45 countries represented. This rise is indicative of the importance networks attach to peering despite the significant drop in transit pricing over the last decade.