Thank you everyone for taking the trouble to come to Peterborough this afternoon, and welcome to our party. It's gratifying to see such an impressive turnout. 5 Years ago, the Internet was a very different place. The web was in its infancy - the bulk of Internet traffic was e-mail and software downloads, the few web sites were mainly academic, and your browser was something called "mosaic". Most people had never heard of the Internet. In the UK, the cheapest Internet access you could get was "a-tenner-a- month". We had at most 50 service providers, and only 5 of these connected to the rest of the world. Globally, Internet Exchange Points were a novelty you could count on your fingers - MAE-East and CIX-West in the US were commercial, Amsterdam and Stockholm in Europe were at research sites. A small group of people (many of whom I am happy to see here) decided that it would be good for the UK to have an Exchange Point too. So we did it. The first traffic flowed across the LINX on the 8th November 1994, less than two months after conception. No contracts, lawyers or paperwork, we just got the kit together and made it work. Like I said, the Internet was a different place back then !-). I am pleased to say however, that the spririt of co-operation between diverse competitors that are its foundation is still very much alive at the LINX. I cannot let today pass without acknowledging some of the key players who got it off the ground: - Richard Nuttall, Cliff Stanford, Kevin Hoadley, Nigel Titley and Kevin Still for the initial conception and much subsequent hard work and support - Past and current Council members including Richard Almeida, Alex Bligh, Grahame Davies and Javed Mirza - Peter Dawe for encouraging and supporting my coming to work here 3 years ago - Past employees Gerry Reilly, Paul Thornton, and Maurizio Binello for building us into a real infrastructure organisation in the past 2 years - Everyone at Telehouse and TeleCity in Docklands - Eileen, Madeleine and Simon at Harvard PR for making sure the world knows we're out there - Also, all the representatives of government, activist, enforcement and other public policy organisations who've engaged us in constructive dialogue with tangible social benefit - And last but certainly not least, Carole, Nic, Roland, Vanessa and the existing team. For me, it has been very rewarding to welcome 5 new faces on board to join Keiron and Mike in the engineering team in the past few weeks. Five years later, the Internet has changed quite a lot since our beginnings - nearly 1 person in 5 in the UK having access from nearly 300 providers, many for free. The LINX ships as much as 1 and a quarter Gigabits of traffic during each busy second, more than 120 times its original total capacity ! The Web is everywhere, and whatever their ultimate extent, the direct economic and social impacts of this phenomenon are highly visible and with us to stay. And *we* got lucky too - by making some right decisions at the right times, we now have the largest Internet Exchange in Europe - the most members, the most traffic, the most staff, 2M EUR turnover; and the biggest office !-) We are now indisputably one of the top 5 Internet Exchanges out of several hundred across the world, and have pioneered innovations such as Gigabit ethernet which even the big US exchanges are only now following. People often ask me why we have our offices in Peterborough rather than in London Docklands - I usually answer: it's very simple, so we don't have to look at the Millennium Dome !-) More seriously, many of us who work here enjoy living in the area, and we have a good balance between quick access to London and the technology skills base around Cambridge, and the higher costs and inconvenience of being based in these busy places. I am grateful to see local officials, press and ISPs here, and hope we'll be able to work with them to exploit Peterborough's considerable potential for e-commerce over the next 5 years. I am also very grateful to Extreme Networks, the supplier that helped us pioneer GigaBit service, for kindly sponsoring our celebration today, and to Debbie in particular for her assistance and support over the past year. For sponsored hospitality, I am very glad we could go to "Extreme's" :-) Finally, the whole motivation for the LINX's existence is about co-operation, and this means that the whole list of people who have helped and supported us over the years, including members, suppliers, and the wider Internet community, is a very long one. This means I can't name all of you, but today is our way of saying thank you. Please do enjoy yourselves, including the food, drink, and another world first - a switch cake using "GigaBite" technology :-) Those of you who want to look into the mysterious inner workings of the LINX office, and our new space, are very welcome to pop around the corner to do so. See you again in 2004 !