The Emerging 21st Century Access Power Peering

From the beginning of the Internet as a government-funded network of networks through the commercialization of the Internet, the Internet ecosystem had gone through tremendous changes. The economic models for charging for connectivity was invented, the interconnection regimes were created and evolved, and Internet Peering was employed as a local routing and business optimization. But how has it changed recently, and what are the trends moving forward into the 21st century? This paper describes the dramatic evolution of the Internet Peering ecosystem from the economic downturn in 2001 to the massive paradigm shifts playing out right now in 2011. These shifts are "massive" in the sense that the power positions of the players has changed, and the underlying assumptions of peering equity have adjusted accordingly.