A Region-Centric Analysis of the Internet Peering Ecosystem

The Internet is transitioning from a hierarchical structure to a flat structure where more and more networks participate in public peering at IXPs and private peering at interconnection facilities to increase performance and reduce transit costs. PeeringDB is a public online database containing information about IXPs, facilities, and networks participating at IXPs and facilities. In this paper, we perform an in-depth analysis of the PeeringDB data to gain an understanding of the public and private peering ecosystems in the five regions of the world (i.e., North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Africa). We study how IXPs, facilities, and peering networks are distributed across the five regions. We also investigate how distribution of network business type, peering policy, and traffic level varies across the five regions. Our analysis provides a snapshot of the current state of the peering ecosystems in the five regions of the world and reveals the similarities and differences between these peering ecosystems