Section III - The Global Internet Peering Ecosystem

Excerpts from The Internet Peering Playbook: Connecting to the Core of the Internet

In this section we will explore the Internet operations context—the environment, the participants, and the dynamics at the core of the Internet.

We will start by quickly examining how we got here. We will learn about the first peering and how the government-funded NSFNET backbone evolved into the commercial model of today.

The Global Internet Peering Ecosystem model is introduced as a collection of Internet Regions, each with its own Internet Peering Ecosystem. We spotlight the categories of participants, their positions, and corresponding motivations. You will learn why their behavior is predictable in the ecosystem.

The section then brings us to the present day by walking through the addition of several key players in the ecosystem. These players embrace peering on a massive scale, creating a "fat middle" in the ecosystem. We finish with the emerging access power peering dynamic of 2010. This section contains the following chapters:

Chapter 8 – The 20th Century Internet Peering Ecosystem

Chapter 9 – The Global Internet Peering Ecosystem Structure

Chapter 10 – The 21st Century Internet Peering Ecosystem