An Overview of Peering; Benefits of Peering

Andrew Ogilvie Managing Director, Xtraordinary Networks Ltd www.xtrahost.co.uk

Why am I here today? (Very briefly)

Xtraordinary Networks

Cloud Hoster - HQ in Edinburgh

Hosting in Edinburgh (Gyle) & London (Interxion)

Member of LINX since 2005

How does the Internet work? The Internet is a 'network of networks' “Internet was designed to survive a nuclear

attack” - not true. But work did consider robustness and survivability, including the capability to withstand losses of large portions of the underlying networks

What do we mean by a network?

What is a Network?(According to the pedants on Wikipedia)

An Autonomous System is a collection of connected Internet Protocol (IP) routing prefixes under the control of one or more network operators that presents a common, clearly defined routing policy to the Internet

What is a Network? (In plain English) Autonomous System – typically an ISP, hosting

provider, content provider, datacentre or large organisation

Normally used to 'multi-home' – connect to multiple Internet providers and/or for 'peering'

Approx 25,000 Autonomous Systems or 'Networks' form the Internet

Example Network AS Numbers

BBC AS2818

Brightsolid AS5564

BT (UK) AS2856

Hurricane Electric AS6939

IFB AS8902

Fluency AS56595

Janet AS786

Pulsant AS12703

Xtraordinary AS30827

So how does one Network communicate with one of the other 25,000 Networks around the world?

Peering is part of the answer

Peering is where two networks exchange traffic

Either at an Internet Exchange (e.g. LINX) Or directly, between routers Larger networks will peer at lots of different

locations

Largest Global Internet Exchanges London – LINX Amsterdam – AMSIX Frankfurt – Decix

What is an Internet Exchange?

Why would you peer? More control – direct exchange of traffic with

nobody else in the way Improve quality – direct physical route, quicker

path, lower latency, no contention Reduce costs – peering is normally cheaper

than buying 'IP transit' – the alternative to peering

Diversity and resilience – another route for traffic to follow – spread the load

Technical Contacts - if there are problems you can talk to the exchange tech staff or directly to contacts at other networks

If the exchange breaks - be in the know! Peering brings technical and marketing kudos

Austria Telekom Austria TA AG 8447

Germany Telefonica Deutschland GmbH 6805

Germany Vodafone D2 GmbH 3209

Greece OTEGlobe S.A. 12713

Iceland Iceland Telecom 6677

Ireland Eircom Group Plc 5466

Israel 013 Netvision Ltd 1680

Malaysia Telekom Malaysia Berhad 4788

Romania RCS & RDS S.A. 8708

Russia CJSC Company TransTeleCom 20485

Russia Golden Telecom 3216

South Africa Internet Solutions (PTY) Ltd. 3741

South Korea SK Broadband Co., Ltd. 9318

Turkey Turk Telekom 9121

UAE etisalat 8966

Latency – Round Trip Time Latency – London to Edinburgh 10-16

milliseconds Computer gaming, video, VOIP, remote

desktop, applications – can be sensitive to latency

An Exchange Can Be Where 'eyeballs' meet 'content'

Eyeballs e.g. consumer ISPs – BT, Talk Talk, Sky, Virgin Media, Mobile Networks

Content – iPlayer, Netflix, hosters, applications

Not All Peering Occurs on an Internet Exchange

Peering across the LINX 'fabric' is known as public peering.

The alternative is private peering directly between networks - 'sling us a cable'

What do you need to peer on an exchange?

- An Autonomous System (AS) number

- A router

- Routes & traffic

- Some money

- Technical clue – BGP4 routing

You Don't Have to Peer With Everyone

Choice of

- Open Peering (with anyone, often via a route-server)

- Selective Peering (pick your partners)

- Very Restricted Peering (Tier-1 big boys)

Why we welcome Scottish IX initiative Establishing a Scottish Internet Exchange is

long overdue It makes technical sense for Scottish Internet

traffic to be 'peered off' in Scotland, not sent down to London and back again

Growing rise in traffic – e.g. iplayer, downloads, backups – maybe now is the time

Strategic economic benefits

Why have LINX run Scottish Internet Exchange?

Credibility Brings large audience and contacts of existing

LINX members Technical experience Benefits of scale Legal, billing, admin covered Manchester exchange is active & growing

Thank-you

Any questions?

Andrew Ogilvie

AS30827

andrewo @ xtrahost.co.uk