My Blog
DrPeering -
Q: What were the origins of Internet Peering? When was the first peering agreement?
George Costanza
A: I came across a very nice white paper from Lyman Chapin the Interisle Consulting Group that described the story far more eloquently than I could so I will simply quote the relevant two paragraphs and encourage you all to read the rest of his Interconnection and Peering among Internet Service Providers - A Historical Perspective paper:
The relevant section:
“2.3.2 CSNet and NSFnet
The USENET, BITNET, and commercial X.25 networks could not be connected to
the ARPAnet (or to the other federal networks that were interconnected at the
FIXes) because of the government policy limiting ARPAnet to government
agencies and their contractors. The turning point that eventually brought them
all together was the CSNET project, which was created in 1981 under a grant
from the National Science Foundation . The purpose of CSNET was to link all of
the computer science departments and industry labs engaged in computing
research. It provided TCP/IP interfaces with USENET, BITNET, and the X.25
networks, and established nameserver databases to enable any computing
researcher to locate any other.
The development of CSNet highlighted the disconnect between the “haves” and
the “have nots” in the computing research community—between those who
could find a government agency or contractor to sponsor their connection to the
ARPAnet, and those who could not (connecting instead to CSNet). In modern
terms, we would say that the customers of one ISP (ARPAnet) could not
communicate with the customers of another ISP (CSNet), because no mechanism
existed to reconcile the different Acceptable Use Policies of the two networks.
This disconnect persisted as both sides assumed that any agreement to exchange
traffic would necessarily involve the settlement of administrative, financial,
contractual, and a host of other issues, the bureaucratic complexity of which
daunted even the most fervent advocates of interconnection—until the CSNet
managers came up with the idea that we now call “peering,” or interconnection
without explicit accounting or settlement. A landmark agreement between NSF
and ARPA allowed NSF grantees and affiliated industry research labs access to
ARPAnet, as long as no commercial traffic flowed through ARPAnet. This
agreement was the turning point at which the evolution of commercial network
interconnection began.”
You learn something new every day. I always wondered why peering was traditionally “free”, without mention of the value of what is provided reciprocally. It turns out, there is power in not mentioning.
Dr Peering
When was the first peering agreement?
Origins of Internet Peering
October 22, 2010
The 2014 Internet Peering Playbook
In Print
and for the Kindle:
The PDF, ePub and
.mobi files are
also available as a
perpetually updated
DropBox share:
Price: $9.99
and in French!
The 2013 Internet Peering Playbook
also available for the Kindle:
and the ipad