London-based Internet traffic exchange point LINX (London Internet Exchange) disconnected Rostelecom and MegaFon from its services. These measures were taken as part of Western sanctions due to the Russian military operation in Ukraine. The Ministry of Digital Development claims that the LINX solution will not affect the speed of the Internet in Russia. Both Russian companies expressed a similar opinion.
LINX has been operating since 1994 and is one of the largest Internet traffic exchange points in Europe. It unites the networks of more than 950 operators, at the peak of its traffic reaches 6.89 Tbps.
LINX notified its customers of the decision yesterday, March 11th. A copy of the company’s letter was published in Twitter, Reuters journalist Rafael Sutter confirmed the authenticity of the document. It says that the board of directors of LINX decided to turn off MegaFon and Rostelecom due to the fact that both companies are associated with persons subject to sanctions. LINX noted that it will continue to check on other Russian clients that may be associated with blacklisted people. Other LINX clients include VimpelCom, MTS and TransTeleCom.
The Mintsifra said that MegaFon and Rostelecom planned to abandon LINX services themselves due to the insignificant amount of traffic. The agency claims that Russian users will not notice the damage from LINX’s actions. “Disabling the British LINX will not affect the speed and quality of the connection of domestic operators. The traffic will be redistributed to other Internet traffic exchange nodes,” the ministry told TASS.
MegaFon and Rostelecom also said that their disconnection from LINX would not affect the quality of services provided.
On February 24, Vladimir Putin announced a military operation to “denazify and demilitarize” Ukraine. Western countries condemned this decision and imposed tough anti-Russian sanctions, while foreign companies and services began to massively stop working in Russia. Visa and MasterCard payment systems, as well as PayPal, no longer work in the country. The American cloud provider Cloudflare said that it did not intend to stop working in the Russian Federation
Read about the military operation in Ukraine in the online broadcast of Kommersant.