PacketExchange Expounds, Expands on Peering Benefits

Peering is an attractive option for service providers who want more control over the quality of their Internet traffic than they would if they used transport from the incumbent telcos that operate the Internet backbone. That’s the word from Internet exchange services firm PacketExchange and carrier-neutral data center company CRG West, which recently joined forces to expanding their peering capabilities.

Jason Velody, CTO of PacketExchange, said peering allows connectivity and content providers to get around such quality issues as congestion, latency, jitter and packet loss that are common in standard Internet transport today. Of course, keeping a lid on these quality-effecting factors is particularly important when delay-sensitive applications such as software as a service, video and VoIP are involved.

PacketExchange can do that – and offer SLAs as part of its services – because it delivers end-to-end services over its own global MPLS/Layer 2 network, which serves as an alternative to the public Internet backbone, Velody said. Because PacketExchange customers have a connection through a local switch, they have visibility into their traffic and thus can control it, Velody explained; whereas with incumbent Internet transport services, there is no direct connection between the service providers at each end.

By partnering with CRG West, PacketExchange increases its peering community (it now has nearly 600 customers and 44 POPs worldwide) and expands its wide-area peering network portfolio. Meanwhile, CRG West customers can plug into PacketExchange’s services.

With Any2 Remote, PacketExchange customers can easily access, through a VLAN connection from their existing PacketExchange PoP connection, any CRG West ANY2 peering exchange in North America.

The partnership also introduces, Any2 Local, a new service that enables CRG West's Any2 exchange peering community easily to connect with the PacketExchange wide-area Internet exchange. Any2 Local also will enable CRG West's exchange peering community access to PacketExchange's services including eXpress, shared VLAN service that enables multi-lateral, wide-area peering; ProXimity, a VLAN connection designed to allow customers to bilaterally peer their networks without compromising visibility, control or service levels across a wide-area peering network; and DireXion, which provides a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint private network employing Ethernet technology.

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