Internet Peering

Discussion

Martin Springer, in the Repositorium blog at http://camorra.org/swann/2007/05/15/peers/

He writes, concerning the 'peering' of internet communication:

"The example of the ISPs indicates that for-profit business relationships do reduce the number of people who can be of equal standing with each other'

Citation

Farooq Hussain at http://www.farooqhussain.org/projects/peeringarchiv

"Financial considerations often play a role in routing policies. In the “old days” of federal subsidies this was not much of an issue, and there were always grants available for continuing support for the research and educational network. Now the ISPgrid net has raised issues as ISPs installed POPs in many regions and countries. ISPs can have their own customers, but they can also be customers of other ISPs as well. Who pays whom, and how much?

Peering is often a political issue. The politics of peering more or less began in 1997, when a large ISP informed about 15 other ISPs that their current easy-going peering arrangements would be terminated. New agreements for transit traffic were now required, the ISP said, and the former peers were effectively transformed into customers. As the trend spread among the larger ISPs, direct connections were favored over public peering points such as the NAPs or CIX.

Naturally, no ISP wants to be a customer of another ISP. All ISPs want to be peers, and peers of the biggest ISPs around. When it comes to peering, bigger is definitely better, so a series of mergers and acquisitions (although it is often claimed that there are really no mergers, only acquisitions) among the ISPs took place as each ISP sought to become a bigger peer than another. This consolidation has decreased the number of Tier 1 ISPs and reduced the number of potential peers considerably." (http://www.farooqhussain.org/projects/peeringarchiv)