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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical The Evolution of the U.S. Peering Ecosystem
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 ---------------------------------------------------------------- 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 <[email protected]> 650.315.8635 Co-Founder and Chief Technical Liaison Equinix, Inc. */
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