Peering point congestion. Capacity at peering points where networks exchange traffic typically lags demand, due in large part to the economic structure of the Internet. Money flows in at the first mile (i.e., website hosting) and at the last mile (i.e., end users, spurring investment in first and last mile infrastructure. However, there is little economic incentive for networks to invest in the middle mile—the high-cost, zero- revenue peering points where networks are forced to cooperate with competing entities. These peering points thus become bottlenecks that cause packet loss and increase latency. 2 According to [13], there were overactive networks (ASes) as of June 2010.
