The problem is not to peer or not to peer. The problem is WHERE to peer. I work for a european ISP and the problem we have is the location of the peering. Big

The problem is not to peer or not to peer. The problem is WHERE to peer. I work for a european ISP and the problem we have is the location of the peering. Big content providers will happilly peer with you in, say, Palo Alto or Miami; but they will refuse to add a peering connection in Europe. Why? because today the problem is about WHO pays the Intercontinental route (which limited and is expensive bandwidth). Level3 is known in the industry as a pioneer for bit-mile-peering agreements. This means you have to sample the origin and destination of the IP packets and make some calculations to know how many miles the packet has traveled and pay / get paid if someone dumps long haul traffic to a peer. Getting to this is complicated with current tecnhology and many companies are refusing to peer with Level3 because they don't know what will happen with their business with bit-mile-peering agreements.