An understanding of Peering

Can anyone provide an overview?

[IanTurner]

Peering is something ISPs do to provide the best coverage possible to their customers, but further than that I only have a sketchy knowledge of how and why it works. Can anyone give me an understandable oveview peering?

[Paul in South Africa]

h*tp://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid7_gci212768,00.html

might help you.

[dmorison]

A fair bit of peering goes on between the large ISP's and the large content providers.

For example, the BBC allow any ISP with a network presence in Telehouse (Docklands, London) to "peer" with their network.

So as my ISP is ntl, who have presence in Telehouse, my request to www.bbc.co.uk (ignoring transparent proxy servers for a moment) would go directly from ntl's core network straight into the BBC's core network, effectively bypassing "The Internet".

Have a look at this if you're curious:

[support.bbc.co.uk...]