Section III — The Global Internet Peering Ecosystem

In this section we explore the Internet operations context — the environment, the participants, and the dynamics at the core of the Internet.

We will start by quickly examining how we got here. We will learn about the first peering and how the government-funded NSFNET backbone evolved into the commercial model of today.

The Global Internet Peering Ecosystem model is introduced as a collection of Internet Regions, each with its own Internet Peering Ecosystem. We spotlight the categories of participants, their positions, and corresponding motivations. You will learn why their behavior is predictable in the ecosystem.

The section then brings us to the present day by walking through the addition of several key players in the ecosystem. These players embrace peering on a massive scale, creating a “fat middle” in the ecosystem. We finish with the emerging access power peering dynamic.

Chapters in this section

• Chapter 8 — The 20th Century Internet Peering EcosystemFrom NSFNET to commercial peering: how we got here.
• Chapter 9 — The Global Internet Peering EcosystemInternet Regions, ecosystem species, and predictable behavior.
• Chapter 10 — The 21st Century Internet Peering EcosystemSix evolutions: CDN dominance, large-scale content peering, the fat middle.