10 Reasons to peer: 6. Peering increases the stability of your network

While buying IP transit is always just a best-effort method, without any guarantee that data is delivered or that the delivery meets any quality of service, peering increases the stability of your network. Read on to learn how this happens in this sixth instalment of our “reasons to peer” series.

Peering gives you direct access to many of your required traffic partners without having other networks in between. Internet Exchanges are the central Points of Presence (PoPs) for most networks, meaning that networks treat those PoPs well and put special effort in regards to redundancy, router hardware, etc. As mentioned in the previous article, for the major content, streaming, social, and gaming networks, peering is the key to having good network performance. Their presence at the major Internet Exchanges is at the heart of their network.

Secure routes to important networks

By being directly connected to an Internet Exchange, you secure the traffic routes to these most important networks. Aside from this, you also have a better-working network, as you have less latency, fewer jitter problems, less packet loss, and more throughput – which has a strong impact on the stability of your network. And in case of failure in peering, you are backed up by your IP transit.

You can read the previous articles in the Reasons To Peer series below :

10 Reasons to peer: 3. Peering lowers latency

In this third article in our “reasons to peer” series, we look at how peering lowers latency.

The shorter the trip, the better the latency

Latency is the delay between a user’s action and the response to that action from a website or an application – in networking terms the total time it takes for a data packet to make a round-trip. It is measured in milliseconds, and Internet quality depends on it. For example, for a website, even a 2-second delay in the loading time is sufficient to increase the bounce rate more than 100%!

Peering paths outperform transit paths for 91% of Autonomous Systems (ASs), meaning that peering offers the shortest path for data to travel, and therefore better latency.

Control your traffic streams

Peering gives you the control over where your network exchanges traffic with other important networks. You control where to handover the traffic (which city/which Internet Exchange) and you have control over your backhaul and the peering port usage. As the other network also has this control, together with your peering partner, you have a controlled end-to-end handling of your valuable traffic streams.

Catch-up with the first two articles in the series:

1. Peering Raises Your Revenue

2. Peering lowers your costs

10 Reasons to peer: 10. Peering is a quality seal

This is the final article in our “reasons to peer” series, and it is dedicated to the non-technical benefit of peering – how it can be used as a quality seal to grow your business.

Assurance of a well-operated network

If you are a company that sells network services to other companies or individuals, peering at an Internet Exchange offers you a chance to show your customers and prospects that you care about the quality of your service. Better latency, less packet loss, and higher throughput are all benefits of peering, and many network providers use their Internet Exchange membership as part of their marketing strategy and as an assurance of a well-operated network.

As part of an Internet Exchange, you can leverage the brand and present yourself as a member of the community.

Ready to start peering?

We hope you enjoyed this series. You can download our white paper “Ten reasons why you should peer” to get a quick overview of all the benefits we presented. And if you have any peering related questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at sales@de-cix.in

You can read the previous articles in the Reasons To Peer series below :

 

10 Reasons to peer: 9. Peering connects you to an interconnection ecosystem

Peering at an Internet Exchange means being part of an interconnection ecosystem. While the exchange itself is a small niche topic for those who operate it, the ecosystem around it offers a very broad range of possibilities for doing business – another reason to peer.

While the Internet Exchange (IX) or Internet Exchange Point (IXP) is the physical infrastructure which lets networks exchange traffic, the networks who want to peer at one create their own ecosystem. They have large demands on data center space, backhauling, IP transit, voice and VoIP business, CDN clusters, maintenance and operational staff, MPLS and much more. In the big hubs, this is a billion-dollar business.

Peering is about community

Beyond business and engineering, a successful ecosystem also requires the building of a community. Peering requires a common understanding and mutual agreements for the benefit of better, more resilient Internet infrastructure.

Interconnection beyond peering

The leading Internet Exchange operators connect thousands of networks both locally and through remote peering at their locations around the world. They also offer additional interconnection services such as security solutions, cloud connectivity solutions, direct connections with SDWANs, and the possibility to create Closed User Groups.

Internet Exchanges have become the enabler for a whole interconnection ecosystem connecting businesses and people in the most transparent, secure, and performant way.

 

You can read the previous articles in the Reasons To Peer series below :

10 reasons to peer: 8. Peering improves user experience

When it comes to end-user experience, peering has a lot of advantages compared to IP transit-only designs. Better latency, less packet loss, and higher throughput all mean that your services work better and your users will be happy.

We have already talked about latency in a previous article in this “reason to peer” series, when we said even a 2-second delay in the loading time of a website is sufficient to increase the bounce rate more than 100%.

Another good example is gaming in the cloud: Cloud gaming providers have to select their servers and Internet Exchanges through which the game data is transported in such a way that they are closer to the gamers, meaning that the data path between the user and the server is as short as possible, resulting in the best possible latency and the best possible gaming experience.

Increase performance and access speed

Peering can also solve some of the challenges larger enterprises are facing. From video conferencing to cloud computing, digital capabilities are essential for any organization that wants to build a more efficient workforce – especially at a time when people are increasingly working from home. Rising volumes of IP traffic need to be distributed efficiently and cost-effectively to employees around countries and around the world. By peering at an Internet Exchange, you can increase the content performance and access speeds, enhance productivity, and reduce frustration with unresponsive applications.

 

You can read the previous articles in the Reasons To Peer series below :

10 reasons to peer: 7. Peering makes partnerships possible

As we have learned in this reasons to peer series, peering has many advantages, ranging from financial benefits to having a more robust and stable network. It can also offer opportunities for new partnerships.

Easy start for premium services

Internet Exchanges not only offer you access to hundreds of networks for peering, but also to hundreds of possible partners e.g. for buying or selling MPLS connections (known as: MPLS NNI). You can target hundreds of networks without organizing or buying additional expensive fiber patches or ending up in problems with different, not matching data center locations. Peering on an Internet Exchange platform gives you an easy, cheap, and quick start for premium services.

Further, you can also go for dedicated VLAN connections to other members if you need a logical separation of the handover of these services.

You can read the previous articles in the Reasons To Peer series below :

10 reasons to peer: 5. Peering improves your connection to major players

The most densely peered networks in the world know that peering is key to having good network performance. In this fifth article in our “reasons to peer” series, we show you how you can improve your connection with major networks at an Internet Exchange.

Many of the major content players, such as Google, Akamai, Facebook, or Amazon, are typically present at almost all major Internet Exchanges. And in addition to a route server peering session, you can establish a direct peering session with them. Many of the big players send more prefixes via a direct session and also give your traffic more priority and traffic engineering focus on direct sessions.

Direct peering sessions with important networks

It makes sense to establish direct peering with those route server peers with whom you exchange the most traffic and/or those that announce the most prefixes. Your traffic path will remain up and unchanged and it will grow in months, even years, even if the route server was reset during this phase.

It is not just the big players who might be the important networks to you. Peering at an Internet Exchange allows you to secure a traffic path to the networks which are important for you with direct sessions.

You can read the previous articles in the Reasons To Peer series below :

10 Reasons to peer: 2. Peering lowers your costs

In this second article in our “reasons to peer” series, we explain how peering can help you to lower your costs.

Companies need ever increasing amounts of bandwidth – video conferencing, a multitude of SaaS applications, video streaming, and the likes, all demand fast, efficient connections. And this comes at a cost.

Peering vs. transit

Most often, companies connect to the Internet via IP transit: you pay a network for Internet access. With peering, however, two (or more) networks exchange traffic cost-neutrally with each other. By connecting to an Internet Exchange, networks can peer with hundreds of networks.

In many cases, all around the world, the cost of traffic via peering at an Internet Exchange is also cheaper than using transit. Many organisations are therefore turning to peering to reduce costs.

Peering is about performance

Exceptions are of course possible, depending on your region and on the volume of usage of peering and transit ports. But beyond the cost discussion, peering is all about performance. Keep an eye on the follow-up articles in this series, in which we look at the performance-related benefits of peering.
You can read the previous article in the Reasons To Peer series below :

10 Reasons to peer: 3. Peering lowers latency

In this third article in our “reasons to peer” series, we look at how peering lowers latency.

The shorter the trip, the better the latency

Latency is the delay between a user’s action and the response to that action from a website or an application – in networking terms the total time it takes for a data packet to make a round-trip. It is measured in milliseconds, and Internet quality depends on it. For example, for a website, even a 2-second delay in the loading time is sufficient to increase the bounce rate more than 100%!

Peering paths outperform transit paths for 91% of Autonomous Systems (ASs), meaning that peering offers the shortest path for data to travel, and therefore better latency.

Control your traffic streams

Peering gives you the control over where your network exchanges traffic with other important networks. You control where to handover the traffic (which city/which Internet Exchange) and you have control over your backhaul and the peering port usage. As the other network also has this control, together with your peering partner, you have a controlled end-to-end handling of your valuable traffic streams.

Catch-up with the first two articles in the series:

1. Peering Raises Your Revenue

2. Peering lowers your costs

10 reasons to peer: 4. Peering increases throughput to other networks

Peering gives you greater control over routing, resulting in improved network performance and happy end users. In this fourth article in the “reasons to peer” series, we explain how this works.

When data is transported via public transit carriers, the data flows via a private network interconnect (PNI) between the involved carriers. PNIs mean cost, work, maintenance, and organization between those carriers, and upgrades of PNIs between large carriers do not always happen in time. Running your traffic over saturated PNIs can nevertheless work for a while, even without a noticeable latency or loss of quality – depending on the case.

But using a saturated PNI does have an effect on the end-user experience. If your users are streaming video or online gaming, it can result in many buffering interruptions and not very happy users.

Ensured bandwidth

With peering, you are in control of your points of interconnection where both you and the Internet Exchange you are connected to ensure enough port bandwidth. If you have enough peering bandwidth, your users have almost unlimited possible throughput to the other networks. For Internet Service Providers (ISPs), for example, the limit in this case is just the service the user bought from you, and not the overcrowded PNI traps of Tier 1 or Tier 2 carriers you are using.
You can read the previous articles in the Reasons To Peer series below :