LINX NAIROBI 2025 DEVELOPMENTS
LINX Nairobi is an Internet Exchange Point( IXP) for East Africa, located out of three data centre locations across Kenya’ s capital city. The IXP has the vision to further enhance connectivity and the digital ecosystem across Kenya and East Africa.
Kenya is considered one of the leading technology powerhouses of Africa and has undergone a significant digital revolution since the early 2000s. As a result, it is uniquely positioned to serve East Africa with fast-growing fibre connectivity, with a wellconnected submarine cable network providing pathways to Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
LINX Nairobi is a standalone interconnection hub that is designed to keep network traffic local. Networks located in any of nearby data centres 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 network providers to directly improve network traffic control and the route it takes. According to LINX, it is often more cost effective than other methods of traffic management and improves network latency.
LINX Nairobi in particular is one of the IX’ s more recent developments. As an interconnection hub for East Africa, the organisation is expanding its presence at PAIX Data Centres in Nairobi to prepare to expand its network.
“ We are definitely adapting our infrastructure to try and attract new types of members and new types of customers to LINX both as a push and a pull,” Richard says.“ We see the demand coming to us and people asking for it and we’ re also seeing opportunities in certain markets for us to build out.
“ When we build our infrastructure, we’ ve been building layer two internet connectivity services for more than 30 years. Allowing us to adapt our network to provide these additional type services hasn’ t been difficult – because we’ re trusted and we’ ve got a secure platform, it’ s a natural evolution for us.”
Embracing emerging technologies As AI and edge computing are becoming more popular, data centres are adapting to serve the mounting appetite. For LINX, however, these
64 April 2025