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<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>tl;dr: </b>the survey is at<b> </b><a href="https://pch.net/survey"><b>https://pch.net/survey</b><b></b></a></span></p>
<p class="p2"><span class="s1"><b></b></span><br></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Background:</b></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">Every five years, beginning in 2011, PCH has conducted a comprehensive global survey characterizing Internet peering agreements. They are the only ones of their kind, and are relied upon not only by network operators, but also by legislators and regulators throughout the world to understand the Internet interconnection landscape.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">Our write-ups of the prior surveys can be found here:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s2"><a href="https://www.pch.net/resources/Papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2011/">https://www.pch.net/resources/Papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2011/</a><a href="https://www.pch.net/resources/Papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2011.pdf">PCH-Peering-Survey-2011.pdf</a></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s2"><a href="https://www.pch.net/resources/Papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2016/PCH-Peering-Survey-2016.pdf">https://www.pch.net/resources/Papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2016/PCH-Peering-Survey-2016.pdf</a></span></p>
<p class="p6"><span class="s2"></span><br></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s2"><a href="https://www.pch.net/resources/Papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2021/">https://www.pch.net/resources/Papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2021/</a><a href="https://www.pch.net/resources/Papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2021/PCH-Peering-Survey-2021.pdf">PCH-Peering-Survey-2021.pdf</a></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">…and video of the NANOG presentation of the 2016 results is here:</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p5"><span class="s2"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPuoBmxyXMc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPuoBmxyXMc</a></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">At the time of the 2011 survey, we committed to repeating the survey every five years, to provide time-series data about the direction peering trends take. We’re now conducting the fourth iteration of the survey.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">Among other things, the surveys have helped establish a better understanding of trends in:</span></p>
<ul class="ul1">
<ul class="ul2">
<li class="li4"><span class="s1">The increasingly uniform global norms of interconnection</span></li>
<li class="li4"><span class="s1">National preferences within the network operator community for country of governing law</span></li>
<li class="li4"><span class="s1">The long tail of small networks which don’t yet support IPv6 routing</span></li>
<li class="li4"><span class="s1">The significance of multilateral peering agreements in the density of the interconnection mesh</span></li>
</ul>
</ul>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">These findings, particularly the first, have been invaluable in giving regulators in the vast majority of the world’s countries a data-driven basis for refraining from prescriptively regulating Internet interconnection. They have demonstrated in objective terms that the Internet self-regulates in a way that’s more globally uniform and closely harmonized than any coordination of national regulatory bodies could accomplish.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Participation:</b><b></b></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">The survey is global in scope, and our goal is to reflect the diversity of peering agreements in the world. Your participation ensures that your norms and ways of doing business are represented accurately and proportionately in the dataset. If you don’t participate, the way you do business will be less well-represented in the data, and will seem less normal to regulators and policy-makers. We’re interested in large ISPs and small ISPs, ISPs in Afghanistan and in Zimbabwe, bilateral agreements and multilateral, private and public. Our intent is to be as comprehensive as possible. In 2011, the responses we received represented 41% of the world’s ISPs, across 96 countries; in 2016, 65% of the world’s ISPs, across 148 countries; in 2021, 76% of the world’s ISPs across 192 countries. Our aim is to be equally inclusive this year.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">Since our principal method of soliciting participation is via NOG mailing lists, I’m afraid many of you will see this message several times, on different lists, for which we apologize in advance.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Privacy:</b></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">In 2011, 2016, and 2021, we promised to collect the smallest set of data necessary to answer the questions, to perform the analysis immediately, and not to retain the data after the analysis was accomplished. In that way, we ensured that the privacy of respondents was fully protected. We did as we said, no data was leaked, and the whole community benefited from the trust that was extended to us. We ask for your trust again now as we make the same commitment to protect the privacy of all respondents, using the same process as was successfully employed the last three times. We are asking for no more data than is absolutely necessary. We will perform the analysis immediately upon receiving all of the data. We will delete the data once the analysis has been performed.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>The Survey:</b></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">We would like to know your Autonomous System Number, and the following five pieces of information relative to each other AS you peer with:</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p7"><span class="s3">• <b>Your peer’s ASN</b> </span><span class="s1">(peers only, not upstream transit providers or downstream customers)</span></p>
<p class="p7"><span class="s3">• <b>Whether a written and signed peering agreement exists</b> </span><span class="s1">(the alternative being a less formal arrangement, such as a "handshake agreement")</span></p>
<p class="p7"><span class="s3">• <b>Whether the terms are roughly symmetric</b></span><span class="s1"> (the alternative being that they describe an agreement with different terms for each of the two parties, such as one compensating the other, or one receiving more or fewer than full customer routes)</span></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">• <b>What jurisdiction of governing law is defined, if any</b><b></b></span></p>
<p class="p7"><span class="s3">• <b>Whether IPv6 routes are being exchanged</b> </span><span class="s1">(this year, we’ll still assume that IPv4 are)</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">The easiest way for us to receive the information is as a tab-text or CSV file or an Excel spreadsheet, consisting of rows with the following columns:</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">Your ASN: Integer</span></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">Peer ASN: Integer</span></p>
<p class="p7"><span class="s3">Written agreement: Boolean<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s1">[true,1,yes,y] or [false,0,no,n]</span></p>
<p class="p7"><span class="s3">Symmetric: Boolean<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span><span class="s1">[true,1,yes,y] or [false,0,no,n]</span></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">Governing Law: ISO 3166 two-letter country-code, or empty</span></p>
<p class="p7"><span class="s3">IPv6 Routes: Boolean </span><span class="s1">[true,1,yes,y] or [false,0,no,n]</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">For instance:</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p8"><span class="s1">42 <tab> 715 <tab> false <tab> true <tab> us <tab> true <cr></span></p>
<p class="p8"><span class="s1">42 <tab> 3856 <tab> true <tab> true <tab> us <tab> true <cr></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">We need the ASNs so we can avoid double-counting a single pair of peers when we hear from both of them, and so that when we hear about a relationship in responses from both peers we can see how closely the two responses match, an important check on the quality of the survey.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>As soon as we've collated the data, we'll strip the ASNs to protect privacy, and only the final aggregate statistics will be published. We will never disclose any ASN or any information about any ASN. We'd like to finish collecting data in the first week of October, about two weeks from now.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">If you’re peering with an MLPA route-server, you’re welcome to include just the route-server’s ASN, if that’s easiest, rather than trying to include each of the peer ASNs on the other side of the route-server. Either way is fine.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">If all of your sessions have the same characteristics, you can just tell us what those characteristics are once, your own ASN once, and give us a simple list of your peer ASNs.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">If your number of peers is small enough to be pasted or typed into an email, rather than attached as a file, and that’s simpler, just go ahead and do that.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">If you have written peering agreements that are covered by non-disclosure agreements, or if your organizational policy precludes disclosing your peers, but you’d still like to participate in the survey, please let us know, and we’ll work with whatever information you’re able to give us and try to ensure that your practices are statistically represented in our results.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">If you're able to help us, please email me the data in whatever form you can. If you need a non-disclosure, we're happy to sign one.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">Finally, if there are questions you’d like us to try to answer when we analyze the data, please suggest them, and if there are any additional questions you’d like us to include in future iterations of the survey, please let us know so that we can consider including them in the 2031 survey.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p1"><span class="s1"><b>Please respond by submitting your survey at </b><a href="https://pch.net/survey"><b>https://pch.net/survey</b></a><b> or emailing it to me directly (</b><a href="mailto://woody@pch.net"><b>woody@pch.net</b></a><b>, not replying to the NOG mailing list), by the second week of October.</b><b></b></span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1">Thank you for considering participating. We very much appreciate it, and we look forward to returning the results to the community.</span></p>
<p class="p3"><span class="s1"></span><br></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>-Bill Woodcock</span></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Secretary General</span></p>
<p class="p4"><span class="s1"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>Packet Clearing House</span></p>
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