>A friend of mine has the following problem:
>
>>I've been given the project of establishing peering connections
>>with >other ISP's/carriers. The biggest problem I have is finding
>>the >right dept to call or e-mail. Take AOL for example, 40% of
>>our >traffic is destined for AOL, can't find a clue on how to
>>contact >them about establishing a peering session via BGP. Is
>>their a list >of companies willing to peer?
>
>Any clues?
>
>Thanks!
>Dale
>[=`)
There are two meanings, in BGP operations, of "peer." One is simply
establishing the BGP connection. The second is an economic one, in
which the two parties agree they have comparable numbers of
customers, and it is in their mutual interest to exchange their
customer routes -- NOT full Internet routes.
It's getting harder and harder to peer with national providers unless
you are also a national or substantial regional provider. At a
minimum, most bilateral peering arrangements expect both sides to
have 24/7/365 NOCs, a national or regional backbone of at least DS3
and preferably faster, and a substantial customer base. There are no
enterprises at the major exchange points, although some of the large
hosting centers are almost exchange points in their own rights.
If you don't qualify for peering, you need to buy transit from one or
more providers.
One exception is the growth of local exchange points, which I happen
to think are very beneficial. The first generally known local
exchange started in Tucson, AZ. In a local exchange, local providers
and significant enterprises share either a small switch or a
distributed layer 2 subnet, and have a small router or route server
that does peering on behalf of the local organizations. By using a
local exchange, you can actually go across town rather than being
backhauled across half a continent to go between major provides.
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