North American Network Operators Group

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a question about the economics of peering

  • From: Alex Rubenstein
  • Date: Fri Nov 30 11:56:24 2001


Today, I was approached by *unnamed-ethernet-extension-company*. They
extend ethernets between several US and UK peering exchanges.

While speaking with them today, thier engineer and I got into a little bit
of a disagreement as to why people peer with each other at public exchange
points. My belief is that generally speaking, networks meet at public
exchange points (such as MAE-*, LINX, AMSIX, AADS, etc) is to exchange
traffic with each other more economically (read: save money).

His belief is that people will pay a premium to get to an exchange point,
because it's worth paying a premium to have 'less hops' between two
networks.

Essentially, he said that paying more for peering that for transit is
typical, and to be expected, and most people accept this.

Whats the common opinion on this?