Peering is more than just setting up sessions with any AS that will accept one. Peering can involve long-term relationships that require reviews and joint planning to grow synergy. A critical milestone in any peering relationship is the business review; and when it comes to business reviews, it’s all about preparation. Learn how Kentik can help you get ready to ace business reviews with peering partners.

1. How to Prepare for a
Peering Partner Business
Review
C F Chui

2. • Open peering policy - will peer with everyone and everywhere possible
• Selective peering policy - will generally peer, but there are a set of requirements that define how
mutual benefit can be gained from peering
• Restrictive peering policy - will peer, but not seeking new peers and will generally decline any
requests
Peering policy basics

3. • Ratio - the network requires a certain balance between the sent and received traffic from the
potential peer
• Volume - the network requires a certain volume to justify the increased workload involved in
setting up and maintaining connections
• Locations - the network requires a certain geographic overlap between the networks so they can
hand off traffic most efficiently and save bandwidth within their own network
• Customers of an existing peer - if your network is a customer of an existing peer to your peering
prospect, your traffic is already on a free connection for them and your traffic might be needed in a
potential ratio-relationship between your peering prospect and your provider
Selective peering policy

4. POLL: What is your peering policy?

5. Analysis

6. Routing
• How is traffic routing in your network?
• How is traffic routed in your peer’s
network?
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA
• Data Explorer is your friend

7. Routing
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA

10. Routing
• Add a connection in NYC will be good for us • Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA
• How does that work for the partner?

11. Routing
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA

15. Quality - Synthetic tests
• Continuous path monitoring with alerts shows your
connectivity works as planned and alerts you when
it does not
• Continuous monitoring of packet loss, latency and
jitter with alerting means you are already on it
before your customers experience any degradation
• Automation could be triggered by alerts from the
tests and do it for you
• State of the internet measurements can help you
quickly determine if an alert from a test from your
network to an internet destination is due to internet
weather or if you need to take action inside your
network.
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA

17. @
Your network

18. Private Agents
Comparison Item 1
• test services inside your network
• Test gateway availability
• Test routing to your network
• Test global reachability
• Destinations inside your network
• Destinations on the internet
• Test routing from your network to
destinations of interest
• Inside your network
• Outside your network
• Test latency to selected destinations
• Test services used by your customers from
inside your network
Global Agents

19. Quality - Synthetic tests
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA

20. Volume
• You will need to have a simple check of the
ratio and the volume of traffic if your peering
partner’s policy requires it. However it is more
important to have a traffic forecast. What is
the expected traffic growth? When you know
this, you can discuss the capacity of the
connections with the peering partner.
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA

21. • Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA

22. Cost
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA

23. Peering type and technology
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA
• Public or Private peering
• Private peering
• Interface capacity?
• 10G vs 100G vs 400G?
• Metro connect or cross connects
And what do we think our peer prefers?

24. BATNA
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA
• Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement
• Is status quo good enough?
• Should we move to transit?
And what do we think our peer would do?

25. BATNA
• Routing
• Quality
• Volume
• Cost
• BATNA

26. Conclusion

27. • We have identified a routing issue and documented a hairpin issue in the current setup.
• We have documented the consequences of the issue by showing latency data.
• The solution is a new connection in the NYC metro.
• Since traffic is growing very slowly, there is not an immediate need for more capacity so, if fixing the
hairpin is not important for the peer, we can:
• Offer to pay the cross connects, or
• Suggest a session on an IXP in the metro.
• If the status quo is unacceptable to us, our BATNA is to buy local transit and move the traffic to that
connection.
Game Plan

28. Questions?

29. Copyright © 2021 Kentik. All rights reserved.
Interested in learning more?
Contact cfchui@kentik.com
Thank you!