Comment by the_only_law

As a small ISP you definitely can peer and many do, you just aren’t going to get settlement-free peering with any of the big eyeball networks like Comcast.

Something like Seattle IX is a good example of where lots of peering sessions could be established (although I haven’t looked at Jared’s ASN in any detail to see where it’s present).

https://www.seattleix.net/home

Any traffic you’re able to offload via peering you wouldn’t be paying an IP transit to haul, so it’s worth seeing if networks like Netflix are on the Route Servers (https://www.ams-ix.net/ams/documentation/ams-ix-route-server...) at any IX nearby your network, seeing if you can negotiate a session over the IX even if they don’t participate in the RS, or seeing if you can do PNI (sling a cable between your networks in a facility you’re both located in).

Edit: Jared’s on Detroit IX. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/20268

Yes, it can be pretty simple. Back in the day when DSL and comcast were the options and all of the connections were things like UP TO 5 or even 20 Mbps, but speeds were rarely that - I paid for a dedicated 2Mbs up and down ($180/month) with no restrictions on use and started sharing/reselling it to others in my apartment building, not with wireless, but with cat5 out the window, up the gutter, back inside, etc. Across the parking lot another guy was sharing his comcast with another building - but comcast was starting to be so slow they couldn't use it. We merged our empires by stringing some cat 5 across the parking lot, around a pole and to his place. Later we added more nearby buildings, all wired until we had 5 buildings and about 20 "subscribers". Even with 2Mbps, everyone on the network was happier with a guaranteed speed than their flaky "up to" speeds they used to have. Did I run an ISP? I had subscribers, had to maintain a network, had a proxy server to reduce requests out of the network, had to deal with abuse and collect money - so I'd say yes, a small one, but yes.

You definitely can (and should) peer as a small ISP, even if you are buying transit from other providers. This is especially true if you're running an MPLS headend as you'll still have choke points at L2 circuits in your own network. Owning your own peering can be a great way to offload traffic to other circuits that share destinations, most commonly traffic destined for VOD/streaming CDNs.

(N.B. — This is what has worked well for the WISP I cofounded, but YMMV depending on headend infra).

So they're leasing ("buying"?) fiber from the same ISPs they're trying to displace and relying on that payment to provide them with continued internet access? This doesn't sound like a real first-class ISP, but something akin to an MVNO where they're at the mercy of the same companies they're competing with. I get the initial sale might seem fine, and the established ISPs might be fine with this as long as the company is small, but why wouldn't these companies shut them off (or raise the prices, etc.) when they grow too big to become dangerous?

At the T1 level it's more completely a mesh type setup, but even lower tier ISPs might set up peering agreements to bypass their main higher tier ISP where it makes sense for cost or service quality reasons. Or refuse to to extract more money as in the comcast vs level1 disputes over netflix traffic a while back

I feel like this could be made into an ISP Tycoon game.