A decade of primary research with hundreds of peering coordinators — published as The Internet Peering Playbook, twelve white papers, and the Ask DrPeering archive. The reference for how the Internet actually works at the core.
2014 · William B. Norton · 320 pp
The fastest paths into the material, depending on what you're trying to do.
The airline-passenger story that opens the book. The premise of the entire ecosystem model.
Read →How upstart IXPs identify the cracks in a dominant IXP and pull customers across.
Read →Every chapter, every tactic, every white paper — freely readable online.
Open TOC →The book is organized around how a network connects, from the edge to the core to the politics — and out into the world.
Internet Transit, the Transit Playbook, and the 12 tactics for getting better economics out of your transit provider.
Open section →Internet Peering. The business case, IXP selection, public vs. private peering, the break-even math.
Open section →How the ecosystem evolved from NSFNET to CDN dominance — and the six evolutions that defined the 21st century.
Open section →The 27-tactic ISP Peering Playbook, data center taxonomy, the IXP Playbook, and the future.
Open section →International peering strategy — a simple framework for extending the network across Internet Regions and emerging ecosystems.
Open section →The original research, 1998–2014. Freely available.
The break-even math that gave the peering community a shared vocabulary for "should we peer?"
Read →The 20 maneuvers ISPs use to obtain peering they otherwise couldn't get. Source material for Ch. 11.
Read →Every paper, organized by topic. The methodology behind a decade of operator interviews.
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