Networking
What is Peering?
Peering is a direct interconnection between two networks that exchange traffic with each other without paying a third party to carry it. Settlement-free peering reduces both cost and hop count. A provider that peers widely delivers lower latency than one that buys all its connectivity as transit.
Why Peering matters
Settlement-free peering reduces both cost and hop count. A provider that peers widely delivers lower latency than one that buys all its connectivity as transit.
Peering in practice
Peering means watching BGP routes and deciding which networks you exchange traffic with directly instead of paying transit. Look at your traceroutes: if packets hop through a Tier-1 carrier to reach a local ISP, you are paying for the middle leg. Change it by joining an IXP or negotiating private interconnects where your traffic volume justifies it. Getting it wrong costs latency per hop and cash per gigabyte. For a small host, peering at one or two strategic exchanges usually beats buying extra transit.
What people get wrong about Peering
The common error is thinking peering is free because it is settlement-free. It is not free; it costs switch ports, cross-connects, router capacity, and staff time to manage. Peering at a tiny IXP where you carry a few megabits can cost more per gigabyte than transit. Correction: peer where you have real volume, not everywhere.
Peering — common questions
Does peering lower my latency?
Yes, if you are not already on the shortest path. Peering cuts out a middleman, reducing hop count and often trimming a few milliseconds. But if your transit path is already direct and short, peering may not improve latency noticeably. Measure traceroutes before and after.
How do I peer with OnionVPS?
We participate at major Internet exchange points in our regions. To peer, you need your own ASN and a presence at the same exchange, then set up a BGP session with us. Check our published peering DB records and contact us via the encrypted ticket desk to arrange the session details.
Where Peering comes up
- Which country is best for offshore hosting? There is no single best country — it depends on which threat you are addressing. For legal protection with European latency, Switzerland or Iceland. For mi…
- Is OnionVPS a legitimate hosting provider? OnionVPS is a registered Seychelles International Business Company operating since 2020, running its own AS200558 network with transit from Cogent, Lumen, …
- How much latency should I expect from a VPS? Within a metro, under 5 ms. Within a continent, 10–40 ms. Across the Atlantic, 70–90 ms. Europe to Asia, 150–200 ms. Antipodal routes, 250–320 ms. Light in…
- Iceland vs Netherlands for privacy-oriented hosting The Netherlands has the best connectivity in Europe through AMS-IX and the lowest latency to most European users — but it is a Nine Eyes member with EU dat…
More from networking
- ASN
- An ASN identifies a network that controls its own routing policy and announces its address space to the global routing table via BGP.
- BGP
- BGP is the protocol that autonomous systems use to exchange routing information and decide how traffic crosses the internet.
- IXP
- An IXP is a shared physical facility where networks interconnect directly rather than paying a transit provider to carry traffic between them.
- IP transit
- Transit is a paid service in which one network carries another network's traffic to the rest of the internet.
- Anycast
- Anycast announces the same IP address from several locations at once, so each user is routed to the nearest instance by BGP.
- IPv6
- IPv6 is the current version of the Internet Protocol, using 128-bit addresses to replace the exhausted 32-bit IPv4 space.
- Reverse DNS
- Reverse DNS maps an IP address back to a hostname through a PTR record, the inverse of a normal DNS lookup.
- Port 25
- Port 25 is the TCP port used for server-to-server SMTP mail delivery.