London based Virtus Data Centres has joined the London Internet Exchange (LINX) to get access to its peering services in 60 countries around the world.

The suburban based data centers are the first LINX appointments outside of the immediate vicinity of the City of London.

Virtus is now an official LINX Virtual point of presence (vPoP) which means it has a direct route back to a main LINX PoP and any LINX operated Internet Exchange Point.

The agreement means Virtus customers at its London1 and London2 data centres (in the north and west London suburbs of Enfield and Hayes) can connect with 520 other LINX members and exchange internet traffic more economically, as they no longer need to maintain equipment at a main LINX PoP.

As LINX members Virtus customers will gain from a lower latency, higher resilience, better transit performance and better routing control, according to Matthew Larbey, Virtus’s product strategy director.

Customers can also cut their costs while beefing up their capacity and strengthening their redundancy, Larbey said.

“Peering with LINX members will significantly augment our Cloud Connect offering and give customers and members immediate access to an increasing range of services,” Larbey said.

Larbey said LINX significantly strengthens Virtus’ position, providing customers with access to one of the richest connectivity environments in the UK.

In April Virtus announced that Microsoft Azure would be available to customers -  in addition to AWS (Amazon Web Services) - over Level 3’s network from its facilities.

Linx also recently signed Brick Lane-based rival data center operator Interxion to its channel, in a move that saw the exchange look for members outside of London’s Docklands for the first time.