The Evolution of the U.S. Peering Ecosystem

Wed Oct 29 18:34:45 UTC 2003

Hi all -

I've been working on documenting some of the significant disruption from 
and aftermath of the Telecom collapse of 1999/2000, focusing specifically 
on the operations community and the Peering Ecosystem in particular. I 
spent a lot of time speaking with Peering Coordinators to document the 
first order effects and some of the second order effects of the 
bankruptcies. I found some pretty interesting and fundamental changes in 
how the Internet is interconnected. Several new players have had a huge 
impact on what I call the "Internet Regional Peering Ecosystem." I 
presented a draft of this research at the GPF VII in Ashburn, Virginia last 
month and would love to have a few more reviewers give it a read and 
provide feedback.

I pasted the abstract below. Thanks!

Bill
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Abstract

A new Internet Peering Ecosystem is rising from the Ashes of the 1999/2000 
U.S. Telecommunications Sector crash. Global Internet Transit Providers 
have gone bust and a critical broadband infrastructure provider has failed, 
leaving in their wake a large set of Internet players to fend for 
themselves to provide their customers with Internet services. A broad set 
of Service Providers that were once focused only on growing their market 
share (at any cost) now are bending down to shave pennies off of their cost 
structure. Those who can not prove the viability of their business model 
while satisfying their customer demands are out of business.

In this paper we share research carried out over the last four years with 
hundreds of Peering Coordinators to document the recent chaotic evolution 
of the Peering Ecosystem. We do this by first defining the notion of an 
Internet Peering Ecosystem, an Internet Region and Interconnection Region. 
We find in each Internet Peering Ecosystem three distinct categories set of 
participants, each with their own sets of characteristics and corresponding 
motivations and interconnection dynamics. We describe four classes of 
Peering Inclinations as articulated in Peering Policies.

The bulk of the paper however focuses on the Evolution of the U.S. Peering 
Ecosystem. Several key players, some abandoned by their service providers, 
have entered into the Peering Ecosystem and caused a significant disruption 
to the Ecosystem. Peer-to-Peer application traffic has grown to represent a 
significant portion of their expense. We describe five major events and 
three emerging dynamics in the Peering Ecosystem that have had and continue 
to have a disintermediation effect on the Tier 1 ISPs.

In the appendix we share a simple mathematical Internet Peering Model that 
can be used to demonstrate this Peering Ecosystem evolution. While not 
complete or by any means precise, it does allow us to demonstrate the 
affect of these disruptions in the Peering Ecosystem.

/*
   William B. Norton <wbn at equinix.com>                   650.315.8635
   Co-Founder and Chief Technical Liaison                        Equinix, Inc.
*/