During 2010 GÉANT initiated a pilot exercise, enabling peerings between GÉANT and 6 CDNs (Content Delivery Networks), either at an Internet Exchange (DE-CIX in Frankfurt, WIX in Vienna and AMS-IX in Amsterdam) or via a direct peering. Transit was offered to all interested NRENs, including those NRENs that do not subscribe to GÉANT World Service (GWS). The service pilot was a success, with 23 NRENs participating and a 100% of traffic volume increase per year.
This service is primarily an investment in maintaining the excellent level of connectivity that our users are used to and expects and providing a long-term solution for sustaining that. This last argument is becoming more important over time as commercial networks keep growing; becoming global operators for whom interconnecting with individual NRENs becomes less appealing.
All the criteria that the GÉANT Exec set for the Peering Service to proceed have been met (the principle requirement being that that policy be presented to the APMs regular STF meetings) and the Peering Service officially entered Production phase on 1 April 2014. GÉANT are activated on a new VRF (AS21320). 20 peers were approved in November 2014. Of these, 12 were activated on 18 December 2014 and 7 were activated on 26 February 2015.
A total of 64 peers were added between April 2016 to June 2017.