Digex Inc, the internet service provider acquired by telecom carrier Intermedia Communications Co last year, wants it to be known that it is actively is seeking both public and private peering relationships with other ISPs of all sizes. In a restatement, the Beltsville, Maryland subsidiary of Intermedia says it will peer with other ISP and Network Access Points (NAPs) and exchange routing information with other ISPs to enable internetworking between both company’s traffic. It speeds the traffic from each set of customers because they are agreeing to forward packets directly instead of going via the conventional internet backbone. Digex already has many such relationships. The most well-known NAPs include Digital Equipment Corp’s Pacific Internet Exchange near Palo Alto, California, and WorldCom Inc’s MAE East in Vienna, Virginia and MAE West, again in Palo Alto – Digex uses all the major ones in the US. The general idea is to peer with ISPs of a similar size in terms of traffic, making the arrangement equitable to both sides and usually no money changes hands. However, as traffic at the NAPs increased rapidly, some ISPs abandoned the previously-held notion of not levying a charge for peering, the most famous of which was the decision by WorldCom’s UUNet Technologies last year, when it said it would not accept any more peering relationships from ISPs that could not provide at least a DS-3 speeds and at least east four geographically diverse locations. That decision brought widespread criticism from smaller ISPs. Soon after, PSINet said it would maintain free peering provided the other ISP paid its own access to a PSINet NAP port. However, Digex is also seeking private peering relationships, which involve direct connection between networks, not usually through NAPs, but at other peering points arranged by the two ISPs.
