The London Internet Exchange (LINX) has announced that their interconnection hub in Nairobi, Kenya is now live and ready for business. LINX Nairobi is the latest Internet Exchange Point (IXP) for East Africa, located out of IXAfrica’s, Africa Data Centres’ NBO1 and iColo’s NBO1 facilities across Kenya’s capital. The IXP has the vision to further enhance Kenya’s connectivity and digital ecosystem.

LINX is not in Kenya by chance since Kenya has had an average of 10.8% growth per year since 2016. Kenya is uniquely positioned to serve all of East Africa with fast-growing fibre connectivity throughout the whole region, with a well-connected submarine cable network providing pathways to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Established in 1994, LINX is a recognised leader in the global interconnection market. Their reputation as a technical leader in the industry and proven success internationally will provide future-proof solutions to further strengthen the rapidly evolving ecosystem in Kenya. I actually got to meet Nurani Nimpuno, the Head of Global Engagement for LINX a couple of months ago in Nairobi and we got to do a podcast session with her on the LINX Nairobi project. You can listen to the podcast below:

LINX are true champions of collaboration within the industry and have been working with key stakeholders on the ground in Kenya leading up to the launch of LINX Nairobi. The LINX Nairobi interconnection hub is a multi-site, interconnected platform accessible from Networks located in any of these facilities can plug into the LINX Nairobi hub and peer their traffic, creating a secure and redundant digital environment for them to manage their network more effectively.

Peering allows networks to improve the control of their network traffic and the route it takes. It’s often more cost-effective than other methods of traffic management and improves network latency. In addition to the data centre stakeholders in Kenya, LINX is working with a number of high-profile, selected technical partners. Nokia was announced as one of these technical partners with the IXP implementing their 7220 IXR D3L and SR Linux Network Operating System (NOS) in order to deliver this future-proof and scalable solution. Smartoptics and Flexoptics were also selected as the right fit to complete the technical set-up.

With a large government-led focus on the future of digital services in Kenya including the Kenya Digital Superhighway Project, set to improve the fibre network coverage as well as ‘smart hubs’ for more rural areas, the timing couldn’t be better for LINX Nairobi. LINX has been a pioneer of peering for nearly 30 years and has changed the Internet and connectivity landscape in the UK. They are fully invested in working for the good of the internet in Kenya as they roll out their peering solutions as well as further interconnection services in the future.