IXP traffic: a macroscopic view

Abstract

Today's public Internet eXchange Points (IXP) are a crucial element in the Internet ecosystem, carrying around 20--24Tbps, i.e. 15-20% of Internet's inter-domain traffic and supporting a large percentage of links among autonomous systems. In spite of their importance, community still lacks empirical data on the nature of the traffic exchanged through IXPs. In this paper, we analyze the traffic data from two medium-size IXPs and draw several important conclusions. We quantify the relationship between the different types (access/content/transit) of ISPs present in the two studied IXPs, both in terms of traffic volumes and peering intensity. We also demonstrate that the peering (AS-level) topology within the IXP is impacted by the pricing model of the IXP. Finally, we shed light on the temporal characteristics of the traffic exchanged at IXPs and list a number of research problems that can benefit from the data studied here. We strongly believe that, in contrast with confidential datasets typically used in studying the Internet traffic characteristics, the IXP data provide rich and publicly available resources crucial for understanding various aspects of the Internet.