In the last couple of days, since Level 3 challenged Comcast's "Internet peering" practices and said they violated the principles of "net neutrality," a lot of people have been trying to understand just how "Internet peering" works. The whole area of "peering" -- the system under which Internet backbone providers like Comcast and Level 3 exchange data traffic -- has never gotten a lot of attention, mainly because it works so well.
We thought it would be useful to offer a brief "chalk talk" about the subject. Here, John Schanz, Executive Vice President, National Engineering and Technology Operations, who runs Comcast's broadband network, talks with Joe Waz about how peering works and how traffic is distributed between backbone providers -- and how it has been successful around the globe for more than a decade, helping to ensure that Internet users get access to the data they want from anywhere on the planet.
John briefly mentions Comcast's "Internet peering" policy -- you can find it here.