Tech Q&A - The Internet

[popeyespappy]

What do tier 1 peering policies look like these days and what boxes are they using for it?

You'd probably have to ask a major ISP. It's honestly not something I've really looked into.

Fair enough. It’s been more than a decade since I cared about peering myself. Once upon a time though I was a senior network engineer for NASA. Among other interesting projects I deployed the hardware we used for peering with the tier 1’s when we transitioned our voice network off the PSTN onto the Internet.

Settlement free peering is nice because it is free. But the Internet has changed a lot in the last 10 years, and I suspected that these days tier 1’s only participate in settlement free peering with their tier 1 peers. Makes since when you think about it. Turns out I was right.

AT&T’s settlement free peering requirements in the US are:

US Peering Requirements - AS7018
• A peer of AS7018 must operate a US-wide IP backbone whose links are primarily OC192 (10 Gbps) or greater.
• Peer must meet AT&T at a minimum of three mutually agreeable geographically diverse points in the US. The US interconnection points must include at least one city on the US east coast, one in the central region, and one on the US west coast, and must currently be chosen from AT&T peering points in the following list of metropolitan areas: New York City/Newark NJ, Washington DC/Ashburn VA, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco/San Jose, and Los Angeles.
• In addition a peer of AS7018 must interconnect in two mutual non-US peering locations on distinct continents where peer has a non-trivial backbone network. These non-US peerings will be with AT&T's regional AS only.
• Peer's traffic to/from AS 7018 must be on-net only and must amount to an average of at least 7 Gbps in the dominant direction to/from AT&T in the US during the busiest hour of the month.
• Interconnection bandwidth must be at least 10 Gbps at each US interconnection point.
• A network (ASN) that is a customer of AS 7018 for any dedicated IP services may not simultaneously be a settlement-free peer.
• Peer must have a professionally managed 24x7 NOC. Peer must agree to repair or otherwise remedy any problems within a reasonable timeframe. Peer must also agree to actively cooperate to resolve security incidents, denial of service attacks, and other operational problems.
• Peer must maintain a balanced traffic ratio between its network and AT&T. In particular, a new peer must have: a. No more than a 2.00:1 ratio of traffic into AT&T: out of AT&T, on average each month. b. A reasonably low peak-to-average ratio.
• Existing peers whose in: out ratio rises above 2.00:1 will be expected to work with AT&T to implement best-exit routing or to take other suitable actions to balance transport costs.
• Peer must abide by the following routing policy:
a. Peer must use the same peering AS at each US interconnection point and must announce a consistent set of routes at each point, unless otherwise mutually agreed.
b. No transit or third party routes are to be announced; all routes exchanged must be peer's and peer's customers' routes.
c. Peer must filter route announcements from its customers by prefix.
d. Neither party shall abuse the peering relationship by engaging in activities such as but not limited to: pointing a default route at the other or otherwise forwarding traffic for destinations not explicitly advertised, resetting next-hop, selling or giving next-hop to others.
• Peer must be financially stable.

Verizon's requirements are similar if a little more stringent. Their in/out ratio is set to 1.8 to 1.