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DrPeering -
Q: There seems to be a lot of discussion surrounding Level 3 and Comcast and their peering, transit, paid peering, etc. Are there standard definitions used here?
Chris “Finchy” Finch
A: Absolutely - I spent a lot of time with the peering community to document the lexicon uses by this community. Below are the definitions that seem to resonate the most:
Internet Transit is defined as a business relationship where an Internet Service Provider provides (usually sells) access to the global Internet. This is typically a metered service at the core of the Internet, although retail customers like you and I typically purchase transit on an unmetered all-you-can-eat basis at our homes.
In the core of the Internet, Internet Transit is sold on a $/Mbps basis; the more traffic sent or received, the more it costs. This leads to the incentive to bypass the metered transit service with some Internet Peering.
Internet Peering is the business relationship whereby two companies reciprocally provide access to each other’s customers.
Internet Peering is typically settlement-free, meaning that neither party pays each other for access to each other’s customers. This is reflective of the underlying notion that peering is a relationship of approximately equal value to each party. Since both parties benefit about the same from the relationship there is no need to encumber the relationship with measurement and settlement.
There is a derivative service available from companies like Comcast called paid peering.
A Paid Peering relationship is a peering relationship but with an exchange of compensation from one party to the other.
The compensation could take the form of $/Mbps as is the case with the more public offerings. In other cases it could be an asymmetric allocation of costs or the contribution of services of value.
Example: Paid Peering for Cash: Comcast offers a paid peering service for those who do not meet their settlement-free peering policy. The metered rate is rumored to be in the $2-$4/Mbps price range, in the same ballpark as the market price of transit. Why would one pay the market transit price when they only hear the Comcast routes? Peering generally provides a more direct and better performing path to the eyeballs, and if it costs the same and performs better, why wouldn't you prefer to pay for paid peering?
In any case, these are the three dominant ways to connect to the core of the Internet. My hope is that this article will provide a lexicon and some context for discussions surrounding the asymmetry that is sometimes in place in peering relationships, and as a precursor to discussions on the issues of net neutrality and the future of the core of the Internet.
Here is an article that has these definitions with some graphics that might help understand these concepts.
Internet Peering, Paid Peering and Internet Transit
January 14, 2011
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