• Introduction
• Infrastructure and Operational Requirements.
• Routing
• Traffic Balance
• Additional Requirements
• Contact Information
• Additional Information
• Important Information

Introduction

This Guide is used by Colt to evaluate requests made by Network Providers and for evaluating existing interconnect partners for the purpose of directly exchanging IP traffic with Colt's Autonomous System (AS) 8220. The third party network must fulfil the following conditions and requirements in order to qualify for a Peering Agreement with AS 8220.

These criteria are only guidelines and are not exhaustive. Any final peering executed by Colt and a potential peer may contain additional terms and conditions. Colt reserves the right to decline to enter into a Peering Agreement even if the criteria are nominally met by a potential peering partner.

Colt currently accepts "public peering" and "private peering" by mutual agreement in Europe, North Americal and Asia Pacific. For details of all our facilities and connected exchange points please see our peeringdb.com record.

Infrastructure and Operational Requirements.

• The third party network shall have a fully redundant backbone network with enough capacity to exchange traffic without congestion.
• The third party network should operate a fully staffed, 24/7/365 network operations centre (NOC).
• Each third party network must be responsive to routing and security issues, providing a knowledgeable technical response within a 24 hour period after notice for network and operational issues and a 2 hour period for security related issues.
• Peers are expected to keep and maintain at all times a record in the peering database at peeringdb.com.

Routing

• The third party network should be able to provide and maintain a consistent route announcement at all peering points with AS 8220 unless otherwise agreed in advance.
• Hosting and Content providers may receive inconsistent route announcements from Colt in order to reduce inbound traffic load where asymmetric routing occurs and Colt infrastructure is being used to carry large amounts of return traffic different from the originating country.
• The third party network must be registered as a Local Internet registry (LIR) with the appropriate Regional Internet Registry (RIR) e.g. RIPE, ARIN, APNIC. Only routes specified by the appropriate RIR are accepted from peers.
• The third party network will not use a route of last resort (i.e. default route) or static routing of any of Colt's address space directed at AS 8220.
• No third party routes that allow direct traffic exchange (in either direction) between AS 8220 and the third party should be used by The third party network unless mutually agreed. For example, Colt routes should not be advertised to another peer.
• Routes should be aggregated as much as possible by The third party network. AS 8220 does not accept route announcements smaller than a /24.

Traffic Balance

• The amount of traffic to be sent and received between Colt and The third party network should be in approximate parity.
• The amount of traffic exchanged in either direction over all interconnection links between The third party network and Colt shall equal or exceed 50 Mbps on average (measured as a total of all interconnect points).

Additional Requirements

• The third party network must not be a customer of Colt.
• The third party network must not have been an IP transit customer of Colt in the past twelve (12) months.

Contact Information

• A contact point (real person, or role account) for abuse/security issues, and a real person escalation contact should be provided, complete with phone numbers by The third party network and Colt should be notified of any changes to these details.
• A contact point for network related issues, outages and operational issues (A NOC and peering contact) should be provided by The third party network and Colt should be notified of any changes to these details.

Additional Information

If a network fulfils all of the requirements outlined above and wishes to proceed with an Internet Peering Agreement with Colt, please contact peering@Colt.net including a list of exchange points, your AS, company name and contact information as outlined above.

A peer is expected to continually fulfil Colt's peering policy for the duration of the peering. If a peer no longer meets Colt's peering policy then Colt reserve the right to remove the peering without notice.

Important Information

This Peering Guide is made available for informational purposes only. It does not constitute an offer to enter into a Peering Agreement. In the event your network enters into a Peering Arrangement with Colt that peering shall be on an as is basis and Colt reserve the right to remove temporarily or indefinitely that peering without notice.

Colt reserves the right to revise or change this document at any time and from time to time without notice. As a living document, this guide will be updated as necessary to enhance and/or expand the information contained herein.