This is the London Internet Exchange’s (LINX) first venture into West Africa, with LINX Accra marking an important milestone for the organisation to boost interconnection, digital infrastructure and end-user experience across Africa.
LINX Accra’s technical installation has been completed at two key data centre locations, Onix and PAIX, that make up the foundational first phase of this strategic hub. Prioritising interconnection, the LINX fabric interconnects these sites with redundant fibre routes, a unique design offering for an IXP, that enables networks at either location to exchange traffic in a method called peering.
A low latency and more cost-efficient way of network traffic routing, peering enables LINX to leverage its more than 30 years of global interconnection experience to West Africa.
“The launch of LINX Accra is a major step forward in our commitment to supporting digital transformation across Africa,” said Jennifer Holmes, CEO at LINX. “By enabling local traffic exchange, and connecting Onix and PAIX via our fabric, we’re helping to build a stronger, more resilient and higher performing internet ecosystem in the region.”
LINX Accra, which was announced last year, will now provide a neutral future-proof platform and meeting place for Internet Service Providers (ISPs), content providers, cloud services and businesses alike to exchange data locally.
The organisations said a third point of interconnection is expected to follow in the coming weeks. This will be when the new Digital Realty data centre in Accra launches, ACR2, which is strategically located to several submarine cable landing stations in downtown Accra.
ACR2 takes the LINX Accra platform to three sites of access, as a result of LINX’s expanded partnership with Digital Realty. It also enables LINX to support Ghana as a connectivity hub, with the country having quickly become one of the most internationally connected countries in the continent.
Nurani Nimpuno, head of global engagement at LINX, said: “We are lucky to have such engaged data centre partners here in Ghana. When building IXPs in new geographies, collaboration is key.
“Our data centre partners are a key part of our business case when building in new locations and success is very much a team effort.”
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