B U S I N E S S
TECHNOLOGY
Keeping internet traffic in Luxembourg Text Sarah Pitt — Illustration Myriam Heinzel
Lu-Cix 3.0 – a platform that connects local internet access to local content providers.
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u-Cix is Luxembourg’s largest commercial hub managing internet traffic on behalf of telecommunications operators. Founded by seven local and regional players, it ensures that traffic remains within Luxembourg for IT security and quality purposes. At the Luxembourg Internet Days 2016, Lu-Cix signed a partnership agreement with the Luxembourg government for financial backing in return for a commitment on quality of service. It represents significant benefits locally as well as boosting promotion worldwide. Luxembourg’s Internet Exchange Point (IXP) Lu-Cix was created in 2009 under the initiative of cofounder Claude Demuth, with the aim of developing the internet in Luxembourg. Hosted in eight data centres, today it represents a growing community of 17 supporting members and 45 members connected to the Lu-Cix platform, from telecommunications, data centres, and cloud service providers. These connected members are Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for content and applications such as media, press, banks and government on the one hand, and ISPs supplying internet access for private and business customers on the other. ASSURING INTERNET INDEPENDENCY “Lu-Cix stands for Luxembourg Commercial Internet Exchange. It is the national crossroad for local and regional internet traffic,” states Claude Demuth, who after dedicating seven years as a volunteer was appointed CEO of Lu-Cix in March
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2016. “Lu-Cix’s first mission is to keep Luxembourg traffic within its borders. Nearly all local and regional operators, such as Tango, Orange, Luxembourg Online and Post Luxembourg are connected on Lu-Cix. If you are a customer of a local internet provider and you go to a website located in Luxembourg looking for local content, then the traffic goes through the Lu-Cix platform,” explains Demuth. “We are just an enabler and build the roundabouts; the operators have to exchange the traffic.” If traffic goes through Lu-Cix, it is by concept faster as the route is shorter, more stable as fewer networks means fewer problems, more secure due to fewer people being involved, and ultimately less expensive.
“Lu-Cix works in the background and is not visible to the end consumer. Whether they know or see us or not, what we do benefits everybody indirectly on a daily basis.” Claude Demuth Lu-Cix
Lu-Cix began as a nonprofit connecting many active volunteers from the shareholder companies with technical expertise, forming a best effort community from 2009 to 2016. “The idea came from wanting to keep local internet traffic in Luxembourg. I carried out a test and accessing RTL.lu took me from a village in Luxembourg through Germany, France, the Netherlands and Belgium before going to Luxembourg City,” Demuth recalls. In 2016, there was a need to form a more professional formal structure to ensure national independency. The CEO elaborates: “If there were a technical attack in a neighbouring country, before when traffic went through these countries, Luxembourg would also have been affected. We are now more secure and beyond the influence of what happens to internet traffic in other countries. While the internet is a distributed network, national content used by national visitors will now remain intact as this traffic remains within our borders.” SPEED, STABILITY AND STRUCTURE Lu-Cix has a neutral independent structural organisation and is divided in two legal entities: Lu-Cix asbl, a non-profit organisation, and Lu-Cix Management GIE (Economic Interest Group). The non-profit is the window to the outside, whose function is to supply the internet exchange services and to promote Luxembourg on a technical level abroad. As of 2017, the GIE manages the technical infrastructure and supplies 24/7 support in case of problems.
01/03/17 12:27