In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the customers of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free or "sender keeps all," meaning that neither party pays the other for the exchanged traffic; instead, each derives revenue from its own customers.
Peering requires physical interconnection of the networks, an exchange of routing information through the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing protocol and is often accompanied by peering agreements of varying formality, from "handshake" to thick contracts.
Marketing and commercial pressures have led to the word “peering” being also used routinely when there is some settlement involved, even though that does not correspond to the original technical meaning of the word. The phrase "settlement-free peering" is in turn used to unambiguously describe the pure cost-free peering situation.
Read more about Peering: How Peering Works, Motivations For Peering, Physical Interconnections For Peering, Peering Agreement, History of Peering, Depeering, Peering and BGP, Law and Policy
Famous quotes containing the word peering:
“The last public hanging in the State took place in 1835 on Prince Hill.... On the fatal day, the victim, a man named Watkins, peering through the iron bars of his cell, and seeing the townfolk scurrying to the place of execution, is said to have remarked, ‘Why is everyone running? Nothing can happen until I get there.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Science! true daughter of old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee—or how deem thee wise
Who woulds’t not leave him in his wandering,”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“That’s where Time magazine lives ... way out there on the puzzled, masturbating edge, peering through the keyhole and selling what they see to the big wide world of chamber of commerce voyeurs who support the public prints.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)