Express or Local Lanes – On Assessing QoE over Private vs . Public Peering Links

Unless the content requested by an ISP’s customer is served from within that ISP (e.g., ISP-owned or third party-provided cache servers), the resulting traffic will be affected by the conditions of the network interconnections or peering links that this traffic experiences en route from where the content is available to where it is consumed, impacting application-level performance and customer-perceived quality of experience. These network interconnections that facilitate the seamless transfer of data between diverse players across today’s Internet are typically established inside commercial colocation facilities or data centers that may or may not house an Internet eXchange Point (IXP). The presence of (parts of the distributed infrastructure of) an IXP in a given colocation facility enhances the interconnection service offerings at that facility by providing public peering options in addition to private peering options.