Statement
I’ve been a LINX board member for two years, and a LINX member since 2012, regularly attending both board and member meetings. Thanks to covid, this has mostly been virtual and Mythic Beasts (AS44684) are supportive of my re-standing.
I’m an active member of the wider community having attended and presented at multiple network operator groups and the IETF. I also contribute to Raspberry Pi who provide computer science education for the next generation of engineers and I also lecture final year Computer Science at Cambridge University as part of the E-commerce course.
In my time on the LINX board I’ve focussed my activities as part of the Finance and Risk subcommittee. Here I feel I’ve made substantial progress being a strong voice in favour of both member price cuts (ports) and increases (on PI). This stems from the belief that every significant service LINX offers should pay its own way and contribute to the finances of the organisation and that cross subsidising one product from another is detrimental to member interests.
I’m excited that during my time on the board LINX has released partial port sizes to enable smaller members to more easily upgrade to larger ports, an issue I identified in my last election statement. I still believe that cost per bit should be a monotonic decreasing function of port size.
I believe LINX has a strong future to improve interconnection via its member interests. Some of this comes from geographically diverse exchanges to shorten paths and latency to improve the internet. Two years of remote working and video conferencing has concentrated many minds as to why low loss, low latency and reliability are the most important features. Thanks to the work done on automation it is progressively easier and cheaper to add another regional exchange with full 24/7 operational support.
I want to see LINX continue to enable a level playing field for internet participants new and old. LINX operates as a neutral middleman to allow parties to interconnect on identical terms for both traditional public peering, PI and some of the newer private group-based services.
I have director level experience at Mythic Beasts and non-executive director experience at LINX. Mythic Beasts has been bootstrapped from a student project to a European network with no external financing. Consequently, I have experience of almost all roles required to operate a successful business including HR, marketing, finance, legal, technical, strategy and public relations. I have started and shutdown two further companies with minimal investor losses once the business case was disproved by the market. Additionally, I’ve completed five acquisitions so have substantial experience in business planning, accounting and due diligence.
Conflicts of interest: I am a significant shareholder and director of member Mythic Beasts Ltd (AS44684). Mythic Beasts Ltd operates customer facing LINX websites on a standard commercial contract on behalf of LINX.
