RE: The Evolution of the U.S. Peering Ecosystem

["Wouter van Hulten" <wouter () vanhulten com>]

Hi Bill,
I'd be happy to review your paper.
Hope you're doing fine in the US, in these times of turmoil.
Best regards,

Wouter 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu] On 
> Behalf Of William B. Norton
> Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 7:35 PM
> To: nanog () merit edu
> Subject: 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 <wbn () equinix com>                   650.315.8635
>    Co-Founder and Chief Technical Liaison                     
>    Equinix, Inc.
> */