5 reasons why Enterprises are adding Peering as part of their digital transformation strategy
An AMS-IX Story
Jan Semmelhack
Business Development
Secure, optimised, and reliable connectivity is a must for any company that wants to beat the competition. Peering can contribute significantly to that goal.
'Peering' refers to the exchange of internet data traffic between IP-networks. It happens everywhere on the Internet and ensures that internet traffic follows the shortest possible routes. This increases the internet quality, secures a low-latency connection and ensures that Internet user have a good digital experience.
Most enterprises do not engage in peering as they have a telecom partner that takes care of their internet connection. Nevertheless, exploring peering can be highly interesting for many companies. It requires specialised knowledge, but the rewards are substantial. Here’s why:
1) Peering gives you direct control over the parties you exchange data traffic
Peering allows you to decide which networks you want to directly connect to. For example, you can peer with service providers like Salesforce and Zoom, ensuring that internet traffic with these parties takes the shortest routes. As a result, your employees enjoy a high-quality connection and optimal user experience for those services. And that’s not all. Peering with networks that establish direct connections with end-users also enhances the quality of the internet connection for the network services you provide. Your customer will be assured of a fast, high-quality digital experience.
2) Peering enables you to have a stable network
When your company peers, you get direct access to many of your traffic partners and secure the traffic routes to these most important networks you exchange data with. Due to the redundancy capability Internet Exchanges offer, when there is any failure, your data traffic takes another safe route which safeguards your business being always on.
Aside from this, you also have a better working network, as you have less latency, fewer jitter problems, less packet loss, and more throughput – which has a strong impact in the stability of a network.
3) Peering gives you control over the route of your internet traffic
When your internet connection is managed by a telecom partner, you essentially have no visibility into the route your internet traffic takes on the internet. In theory, it could travel from the Netherlands, to China, to the US and back. By engaging in peering, you can establish direct routes for your internet traffic. This enables you to ensure that network traffic is handled locally, which enhances the quality of your internet connection.
4) Peering makes your network traffic more secure
By directly exchanging traffic with your network peers, your exposure to the public internet is minimised. The route of your data is controlled and optimised. This increases the security of your network and reduces the likelihood of security incidents. You become less vulnerable to DDoS attacks or BGP hijacks, for instance. Moreover, the risk of intercepted network traffic is diminished because you only exchange traffic with your trusted peering partners.
5) Peering enhances the customer experience
As delivering a seamless and outstanding customer experience is one of the top priorities for all business, having a fast and resilient internet connection is one of the key factors to differentiate your business and get loyal customers. Peering can bring internal and external users a better end to end experience as the network is more stable and faster due to the improvement of the latency and higher throughput.
Peering is an effective method to optimize network infrastructure and improve performance. The adoption of peering from enterprises is a growing demand we are seeing in the market within many industries such as financial institutions, e-commerce, logistics and others.
As an Association and a neutral player in the interconnectivity market for 30 years, AMS-IX team of experts could help you understand your current ecosystem and give the proper advice according to your business needs and objectives.
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