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.
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 →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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