Service: Peering Negotiations and Relations

Operators or organizations can interconnect their networks in order to exchange traffic between their customers. This is called peering. The peering parties usually don't charge anything from each other, because each organization feels that they are getting more benefits from peering than from not peering.

Everything that can be peered is traffic away from the transit connection, which means that peering can reduce transit costs considerably.

Peering can be either public or private. Private peering means that the parties involved have arranged for a direct connection between their networks for the purpose of peering. Public peering means that the parties have connected their networks to the same Internet Exchange Point and are exchanging their traffic there.

Peering agreements are often quite simple verbal deals, but some operators require written agreements with clauses about such things as SLAs and NOCs. Axu TM Oy has experience of negotiating over a hundred peering agreements and of setting up hundreds of peering connections, both public and private.

Four Steps to Peering

1. Get your very own address space and an AS number.
   • RIPE Membership (LIR)
   • RIPE Object Maintenance
2. Start using them with your transit operator.
3. Connect to an exchange.
4. Negotiate agreements and start peering.

There are some variations on the basic concept of peering, like settlement based peering and mutual transit. They all fall under the category of Advanced BGP Designs.