Announcing our Commitment to Open Peering and Connection to NL-IX in Frankfurt

Last year, in 2021, we announced Gentlent’s Anycast Network. Since then, we’ve further reiterated and improved our setups, and codebase. We lowered our response times, drastically increased reliability and uptime, and matured our underlying infrastructure.

As the last change of the year, we’re glad to introduce our commitment to open peering and are announcing connections to multiple internet exchange points globally over the next few months, starting today with the Neutral Internet Exchange (NL-IX) in Frankfurt, Germany.

But what even is peering and how does it affect us?

To start with, peering is a process in which two or more networks connect and exchange traffic directly, rather than routing traffic through a third-party network. Peering is typically done between networks that are owned and operated by different organizations and is often done to reduce the costs associated with routing traffic through said third-party networks.

There are several benefits of peering:

• Improved performance: By exchanging traffic directly with another network, traffic can be routed more efficiently, which can result in improved performance for end users and avoid additional hops on their way through the internet.
• Reduced costs: Peering can reduce the costs associated with routing traffic through third-party networks, as traffic exchange happens directly without having to pay transit fees to a third-party network service provider.
• Increased redundancy: Last but not least, peering can provide additional redundancy for networks, as traffic can be routed through multiple networks in the event of a failure or outage, which further improves reliability.

Overall, peering is a way for networks to connect and exchange traffic directly, which can result in improved performance, reduced costs, increased redundancy, and improved reliability.

Introducing: Gentlent’s Open Peering Policy

Our open peering policy allows any interested network to establish a peering relationship with our network, regardless of their funds, size, and capacity, or whether it’s a small research or hobbyist network, or a globe-spanning content delivery network, such as Cloudflare.

Open peering increases competition among networks which results in lower costs and improved services for consumers and simultaneously increases the level of interconnectivity among networks, which results in a more robust and resilient internet.

You can view our peering policy and contact information over at the Gentlent Peering website.

We’re also excited to announce the upcoming release of our network looking glass, a simple yet powerful tool for network professionals to troubleshoot and analyze internet traffic from our network in real time. It will be available in a few weeks over at lg.as52112.net.

Other useful links:

• PeeringDB
• BGP.Tools
• Hurricane Electric (BGP Tool)