Original Research
A decade of primary research, written between 1998 and 2014, documenting how Internet interconnection actually works. The source material that became The Internet Peering Playbook. Freely available — peer-reviewed by the peering community itself.
For the original sortable index with abstracts, see the full white papers index.
The break-even math that gave the peering community a shared vocabulary for the "should we peer?" question.
Open paper →The base ecosystem paper — terminology, motivations, and the financial structure of peering relationships.
Open paper →An attempt to quantify what an IXP is worth to its participants — a canonical formula for peering value.
Open paper →The 20 maneuvers ISPs use to obtain peering they otherwise couldn't get. Source material for Ch. 11 of the book.
Open paper →Tactics IXPs use to build, defend, and grow critical mass. Source material for Ch. 13 of the book.
Open paper →An argument against the standard 2:1 traffic-ratio peering prerequisite, with empirical data from real networks.
Open paper →A board game for teaching peering negotiation dynamics — used in training programs.
Open paper →From NSFNET to NAPs to carrier-neutral IXPs. The history that explains today's peering geography.
Open paper →How video traffic dominance has reshaped — and continues to reshape — the peering economy.
Open paper →A 2010 forecast for how video would reshape the U.S. peering ecosystem. Worth reading against 2026 reality.
Open paper →The decision framework for when to build your own data center vs. colocating.
Open paper →Why carrier-neutral colos are a different category from internet data centers.
Open paper →How a decade of operator interviews turned into the body of work you're reading now. The methodology piece.
Open paper →The terminology of interconnection — peering, transit, transport, paid peering, partial-route, the whole vocabulary.
Open lexicon →