Award Winning Blog

Monday, March 3, 2014

Paid Peering a Contradiction in Terms?


            On a listserv in which I participate, another participant suggested that there is no paid peering.  I agree that paid peering has oxymoron characteristics, but these two words have become an accepted term for a peering arrangement that involves payment rather than barter.

            An expert on the subject defines paid peering as: “the business relationship whereby companies (Internet Service Providers (ISPs), Content Distribution Networks (CDNs), Large Scale Network Savvy Content Providers) reciprocally provide access to each others’ customers, but with some form of compensation or settlement fee.” William B. Norton, http://drpeering.net/white-papers/Ecosystems/Internet-Paid-Peering.html.

See also: Confirmed: Comcast and Netflix have signed a paid peering agreement, GigaOm; http://gigaom.com/2014/02/23/confirmed-comcast-and-netflix-have-signed-a-peering-agreement/; Netflix is paying Comcast for direct connection to network; Paid peering agreement will improve Netflix quality for Comcast subscribers; arstechnica; http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/02/netflix-is-paying-comcast-for-direct-connection-to-network-wsj-reports/.

1 comment:

Marvin Sirbu said...

There are typically two differences between peering and transit. 1) transit gives you access to any internet destination; peering gives you access only to the customers of the peering partner; and 2) peering typically involves no payments while transit providers are always paid.

In paid peering 1) is still true, but 2) is not; one of the peering partners pays the other.

On the Netflix-Comcast agreement see also an excellent analysis at http://blog.streamingmedia.com/2014/02/heres-comcast-netflix-deal-structured-numbers.html