IP peering, transit, paid peering / on-net only, private and public peering are some of the commercial agreements underpinning the functioning of internet.

Regulated types of access to telco networks (e.g. bitstream) are well understood in policy making circles. Peering agreements are usually not discussed except for odd cases (e.g. Orange-Cogent in France in 2012) or the debate on data termination in the run up to ITU WCIT 2012 in Dubai.

The purpose of this BITS seminar, organised by Cullen International and the universities of Namur and Leuven, is two-fold:

• to provide participants with a basic understanding of the functioning of key internet concepts ;
• to shed some light on the various types of IP peering and the reasons for disagreements between telcos and (large) content providers.