Who Should Read This Book

Excerpts from The Internet Peering Playbook: Connecting to the Core of the Internet

This book is for anyone who wants to learn how the core of the Internet works.

Internet Service Providers will benefit from understanding the methods and clever maneuvers surrounding interconnection used around the globe. This book highlights some of the issues and clever tactics that seasoned peering professionals see after years in the field.

Internet Exchange Point Operators (IXPs) will find this book helpful for building a peering ecosystem in their facilities. They will also better understand their customers’ mindset and motivations. This book presents the financial value proposition that Internet Exchange Point Operators provide to customers. The business case for peering at an Internet Exchange Point is clearly explained. Most important to IXPs, this book documents the tactics that the smartest IXPs in the world have used to build and grow, attack and defend a critical mass or peers. This material has been used as training material for IXP staff as well as for their customers and investor base.

Hardware vendors have found this material of practical value for better understanding their customers’ deployment environment, their applications, and their motivations. While this book was not written explicitly for this audience, the larger network equipment manufacturers are now becoming keenly interested in this material.

Students have used the previously released white papers in their classes for years. This book, rewritten from this earlier material, provides a good starting point for understanding the Internet core. The book provides a pragmatic industry view on interconnections that are essential for identifying research projects that are relevant.

Investors in colocation, data centers, IXPs, or large-scale Internet services will find this book to be an invaluable resource in understanding how the Internet actually works at the core.

This book is an assimilation of thousands of discussions with some of the brightest peering coordinators in the world between 1994 and 2011. A subset of these people is listed in the acknowledgements. Many more of them provided valuable data and insights but asked to remain anonymous. What you hold in your hands represents over fifteen years of primary research.