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

Shaping the Internet: 10 Years of IXP Growth

Over the past decade, IXPs have been playing a key role in enabling interdomain connectivity. Their traffic volumes have grown dramatically and their physical presence has spread throughout the world. While the relevance of IXPs is undeniable, their long-term contribution to the shaping of the current Internet is not fully understood yet. In this paper, we look into the impact on Internet routes of the intense IXP growth over the last decade. We observe that while in general IXPs only have a small effect in path shortening, very large networks do enjoy a clear IXP-enabled path reduction. We also observe a diversion of the routes, away from the central Tier-1 ASes supported by IXPs. Interestingly, we also find that whereas IXP membership has grown, large and central ASes have steadily moved away from public IXP peerings, whereas smaller ones have embraced them. Despite all this changes, we find though that a clear hierarchy remains, with a small group of highly central network

On the importance of Internet eXchange Points for today's Internet ecosystem

Internet eXchange Points (IXPs) are generally considered to be the successors of the four Network Access Points that were mandated as part of the decommissioning of the NSFNET in 1994/95 to facilitate the transition from the NSFNET to the "public Internet" as we know it today. While this popular view does not tell the whole story behind the early beginnings of IXPs, what is true is that since around 1994, the number of operational IXPs worldwide has grown to more than 300 (as of May 2013), with the largest IXPs handling daily traffic volumes comparable to those carried by the largest Tier-1 ISPs, but IXPs have never really attracted any attention from the networking research community. At first glance, this lack of interest seems understandable as IXPs have apparently little to do with current "hot" topic areas such as data centers and cloud services or software defined networking (SDN) and mobile communication. However, we argue in this article that, in fact, IXPs are all about data centers and cloud services and even SDN and mobile communication and should be of great interest to networking researchers interested in understanding the current and future Internet ecosystem. To this end, we survey the existing but largely unknown sources of publicly available information about IXPs to describe their basic technical and operational aspects and highlight the critical differences among the various IXPs in the different regions of the world, especially in Europe and North America. More importantly, we illustrate the important role that IXPs play in today's Internet ecosystem and discuss how IXP-driven innovation in Europe is shaping and redefining the Internet marketplace, not only in Europe but increasingly so around the world.Comment: 10 pages, keywords: Internet Exchange Point, Internet Architecture, Peering, Content Deliver

Seamless Application Delivery Using Software Defined Exchanges

One of the main challenges in delivering content over the Internet today is the absence of a centralized monitoring and control system [38]. Software Defined Networking has paved the way to provide a much needed control over network traffic. OpenFlow is now being standardized as part of the Open Networking Foundation, and Software Defined Exchanges (SDXes) provide a framework to use OpenFlow for multi-domain routing. Prototype deployments of Software Defined Exchanges have recently come into existence as a platform for Future Internet Architecture to eliminate the need for core routing technology used in today’s Internet. In this work, we look at how application delivery, in particular, Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH) and Nowcasting take advantage of a Software Defined Exchange. We compare unsophisticated controllers to more sophisticated ones which we call a ”load balancer” and find that implementing a good controller for inter-domain routing can result in better network utilization and application performance. We then design, develop and evaluate a prototype for a Content Distribution Network (CDN) that uses resources at SDXes to provide higher quality bitrates for a DASH client

The growing complexity of content delivery networks: Challenges and implications for the Internet ecosystem

Since the commercialization of the Internet, content and related applications, including video streaming, news, advertisements, and social interaction have moved online. It is broadly recognized that the rise of all of these different types of content (static and dynamic, and increasingly multimedia) has been one of the main forces behind the phenomenal growth of the Internet, and its emergence as essential infrastructure for how individuals across the globe gain access to the content sources they want. To accelerate the delivery of diverse content in the Internet and to provide commercial-grade performance for video delivery and the Web, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) were introduced. This paper describes the current CDN ecosystem and the forces that have driven its evolution. We outline the different CDN architectures and consider their relative strengths and weaknesses. Our analysis highlights the role of location, the growing complexity of the CDN ecosystem, and their relationship to and implications for interconnection markets.EC/H2020/679158/EU/Resolving the Tussle in the Internet: Mapping, Architecture, and Policy Making/ResolutioNe

Tomografía de la red en un IXP: Primer análisis del PIT Bolivia

Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) have been responsible for leading the most significant change on Internet ecosystem in the last 15 years. Despite the popularity of IXPs, a large number of countries delayed to introduce this infrastructure in their national networks. In 2013, Bolivia encouraged the creating of a national IXP, which motivated us to make the first study about an IXP in Latin America, in a country which had not deployed this infrastructure yet. However, due to the lack of vantage points of measurement projects in Bolivia, it was necessary to develop and deploy a measurement platform, which was called PladMeD, to be able to analyze the influence of the IXP. This works presents a six-month analysis about the influence of the IXP on the national network and it mainly focuses on the modifications in the interconnection as well as the quality of service.Los Puntos de Intercambios de Tráfico (PIT) han sido los principales autores del mayor cambio del ecosistema de Internet en los últimos 15 años. A pesar de la popularidad de los PITs, gran cantidad de países demoraron en incorporar esta infraestructura a sus redes. En 2013, Bolivia impulsó la creación del PIT nacional, lo que motivó nuestro interés de estudiar por primera vez un PIT en la región, en un país que aún no contará con esta infraestructura. Sin embargo, ante la ausencia de sondas de medición de Internet en Bolivia debidos desarrollar una plataforma (PladMeD) para observar la influencia del PIT. En este artículo se estudió durante seis meses el efecto del PIT en la red nacional, enfocándose en las modificaciones en la interconexión y la calidad de servicio en la red nacional