The London Internet Exchange (LINX) has disconnected Russian telecoms companies Megafon and Rostelecom.
The mutually governed Internet exchange point provides peering services and public policy representation to network operators with more than 950 different autonomous system numbers.
LINX is primarily located out of the Telehouse London Docklands data center in London, but is located across sixteen data centers in the city.
"The Board of Directors of LINX has considered the situation in Ukraine and taken legal advice concerning the legal sanctions imposed against designated persons, and entities under the beneficial ownership or ultimate control of those designated persons," LINX chairman Pieter Knook said in an email to customers.
"Following this, the Board has decided [to] cease the provision of all services to, and suspend membership of LINX for, the following members: Megafon (AS 31133), Rostelecom (AS 12389) with immediate effect."
Russian partially-state owned telecoms company Rostelecom claimed that the change "will not affect the work with Russian Internet resources," adding that it "has reserves and alternative routes for traffic exchange with foreign sites."
Mobile phone operator MegaFon said that traffic going through LINX had already decreased significantly over the last few years, adding that it "already planned to end our cooperation with this organization in 2022 and began a systematic redistribution of traffic." The claim has not been independently verified.
LINX's disconnection follows similar moves by Internet backbone companies Cogent and Lumen. Companies like Ericsson, Microsoft, Oracle, Netflix, and Sabre are among a growing number of businesses exiting Russia.
