Peering Exchange

Tue Jan 26 19:12:13 UTC 2016

On Tue, 26 Jan 2016, Nick Ellermann wrote:

> Colton,
>
> We are a member on the Equinix IX. Maybe best for you to speak to an 
> Equinix SE on the topic, but there are two main connection methods. In 
> laymen's terms you can be a member on the switch and then build peering 
> relationships within any other network that will have you. Meaning, you 
> reach out to them or they reach out to you via their contacts in 
> PeeringDB and setup a typical BGP session but usually only exchanging 
> private routes. Therefore you are are not providing transit to the 
> other.
>
> The other option Equinix offers is their MLPE (Multi-Lateral Peering 
> Exchange). Essentially from what we understand you peer once to 
> Equinix's router and all other participants and you are able to exchange 
> traffic. It's not an all or none, you can use filtering to exclude 
> specific ASNs. We are not a member of this service today.

It's reasonably common to do both, since not everyone on the IX will peer 
with or advertise all their peering routes to the route-servers.  Peering 
with the route servers (what Equinix calls MPLE) is a good way to "jump 
start" your use of the IX by immediately getting at least a degree of 
peering with multiple networks established without the coordination and 
config needed to peer with each network individually.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
                              |  therefore you are
_________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________