The State of Peering in 2022: What You Should Know
January 31, 2022Peering — it’s holding strong as the latest and greatest frontier of robust networking and connectivity.
With the popularity of interconnection growing as a result of increasing digital demands, IXPs have been
proliferating and the new map of a business’s IT plan is being redrawn by these hubs of network peers.
What’s an IXP? An IXP (or IX) is a physical Internet Exchange Point located in data centers. The concept
of an IXP is a collaboration with different Internet Service Providers to share infrastructure that
streamlines traffic for all users. This method avoids the need for data to travel to other cities or countries
to get from one network to another, making content delivery much more efficient—and with greater speed
and reliability. This mutually beneficial arrangement can reduce latency and operating costs for everyone
— including your organization.
There’s no question that anyone who needs fast, reliable networking must incorporate peering. Still, in a
new year characterized by ongoing demand evolution (think new platforms, new partners and new
endpoints), there’s much to consider beyond whether or not to join an IXP.
Here’s a few points to help you navigate your connectivity strategy in 2022 and beyond.
Connectivity Demands are Expanding — IXPs are the Solution.
In 2021, reports revealed that there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide. That’s 59.5 percent
of the global population, and 92.6 percent of that total accessed the internet through mobile devices.
Meanwhile, digital transformation spending is projected to reach $2.8 trillion by 2025.
Requirements continue to push businesses toward new places, new capacities, new speeds — and new
mindsets as a result. This is not a trend that will slow down. The IT that enterprises of all shapes and
sizes now leverage are calling for the most advanced, wide-reaching, fast, secure and reliable
infrastructure possible.
Peering is the solution that answers that call.
Peering at an IXP (meaning directly connecting from network to network instead of sending data and
traffic through a third-party, upstream transit provider) delivers all the advantages that today’s business
thrives on. They reduce latency and keep better control over how their data moves from place to place.
When traffic is handed off to transit providers, it will be sent through whichever channels that provider
chooses — meaning it may not be the most efficient. In worst-case scenarios, this can see data going to
nearly the opposite side of the country before it returns back to its final destination — a process called
tromboning. By eliminating the middleman, organizations can avoid transit costs by using an IX provider,
which has a significant impact on lowering your connectivity and operating costs.
Having a bunch of network peers on hand also delivers greater redundancy for reliable networking. If one
peer’s network is unavailable, others can easily take its place without costing too much extra latency.
This is the win-win-win benefit of joining an IXP. Connecting straight to the heart of crowd-sourced
connectivity and leveraging the joint network of hundreds of individual peers allows for more
advantageous costs, lower latencies, faster speeds and greater control.
This makes an IXP an undeniable asset.
Partnership Over Product
When it comes to IXPs, many sound very similar. But, the differences are important. Only a select few
providers have really stepped up to the plate in major ways to make peering accessible and robust, and
businesses have to choose the right IXP among them to fit their needs.
Making a choice often comes as the result of asking questions like: How robust is the ecosystem? Is
there nearby access to carriers and clouds? What about other connectivity resources? What’s the
potential growth in terms of IX users at this location? How long will this IXP even be around?
It’s a lot of questions to consider, but it all boils down to this: How good is the partner you’re aligning with?
The right IX provider will give you all the strategic assets you need and they’ll make it clear what exactly is
at your fingertips. They’ll also always be looking out for ways to improve their ecosystem and benefit your
connectivity as demands grow — in essence, they take the guesswork out of IX selection and ideally out
of digital transformation altogether.
Making Your Choice
NYIIX powered by TELEHOUSE, now celebrating over 25 years of dedicated connectivity service
excellence, stakes its name on delivering neutral, scalable peering infrastructure with unparalleled
reliability. Trust in our robust capability is what makes the NYIIX peering exchange one of the largest
neutral internet exchange points in the world.
This value is amplified by the fact TELEHOUSE, a KDDI Group Company, can also serve as a your
organization’s digital transformation gateway, offering all your carrier-neutral data center and ICT
solutions and services (colocation, network security solutions, cloud enablement services, omni-channel
communication capabilities and more) that a business would need right alongside this trusted and reliable
cost-saving IX offering.
Now that’s a partnership that will take you places.
Click here to learn more about why members worldwide trust our peering exchanges in New York, New
Jersey, Los Angeles and Pennsylvania for their ideal connectivity.