Joining

LONAP members enjoy commercial, technical, operational and social benefits. Any one of these benefits will give your organisation an advantage, although the real benefits far exceed the sum of their parts.

Reduce your IP transit cost and bandwidth usage

As a LONAP member, you'll able to exchange traffic with a growing list of fellow LONAP members. This reduces the amount of traffic you'll need to send through your upstream provider, reducing your bandwidth usage and the cost of your IP transit.

Improve your speed of access

LONAP provides connections from 2Gbps to 400Gbps to its members, with the option for members to achieve even faster connections by bonding additional multiple ports.

Regardless of your chosen configuration, our fast switch fabric and inter-site links ensure the speed of connection to your peers at LONAP remains fast, giving your customers and users a better experience in terms of connectivity.

These high levels of performance are achieved through a core network of Arista switches with dual power supplies and using Fibre interconnects. This represents significant, astute and ongoing investment, and helps LONAP to deliver the best connections.

Increased performance, reduced latency

LONAP members can keep traffic local by exchanging it closer to its source or destination. This is preferable to sending traffic via upstream providers that rely on more convoluted routes, and means that the time a data packet takes to reach its destination is minimised.

This is important for all web browsing and web page image downloads, but is especially so for latency sensitive applications such as online gaming.

Maximise the resilience of your connectivity

As a LONAP member, you have direct access to additional routes to sites hosted on networks connected or transiting via LONAP. This applies especially to UK based sites, and consequently increases the resilience of your connectivity into the UK infrastructure.

Network integrity and reliability is maintained through our constant monitoring and maintenance programme – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year – which helps us to provide a robust and reliable peering point for all LONAP members.

Commercial benefits and additional revenue

ISPs can expand their product portfolio by connecting to LONAP and reselling unutilised exchange capacity to networks anywhere in the world. As a LONAP member, your organisation will be fully supported, and is welcometo introduce additional members to the exchange from other points of presence on your network, generating your own additional incremental revenue.

You can also sell network services internally to other LONAP members via private VLANs delivered to your exchange port.

Mentoring and sharing technical knowledge

For those ISPs who are unfamiliar with BGP and multi-homed routing, LONAP provides an excellent ground for learning. Our mailings and networking events are an excellent source of information, knowledge and wisdom from numerous ISPs around the country, who are more than willing to share their experiences. LONAP members provide a supportive and dynamic network, and are happy to provide sample configurations and even help you debug any technical issues.

Member networking

LONAP members are internet service providers and content providers who run their own networks. All members can enjoy the commercial, operational and social benefits of working with a vibrant and dynamic exchange. LONAP organises regular opportunities for members to meet; exchanging ideas, contacts, advice and anecdotes andswapping potential new supplier details.

Independence and stability

LONAP Limited is a member-owned company limited by guarantee. This ensures our independence and accountability as we are not owned by an investor or a dominant stakeholder or member. LONAP has been trading since 1997 without debt, and with a growing and loyal membership. Our membership is now at record levels, and is still growing.

All LONAP switching infrastructure is housed in dedicated cabinets exclusively for LONAP use, and is sourced directly from each of our datacentre operators. This enables us to control access, and ensures that only authorised LONAP staff and contractors can access our infrastructure.

You can get involved…

Many organisations have found that being involved in LONAP provides a broad range of benefits. As LONAP is a not-for-profit company, we are free to promote our members businesses and their best interests without the risk of conflict.

We provide a platform to raise and discuss technical and commercial issues, and introduce and promote approved suppliers too. As a LONAP member, you will be welcomed into a wide and inclusive family, united by common objectives and interests.