I begin this page with the idea of finding web pages that explain the physical and economic aspects of today’s Internet.

Peering (2011 Feb 17) is a fairly clear explanation of an agreement to exchange data between two network operators. I detect what may be an ideological bias towards settlement-free peering. The section titled “How peering works” describes three sorts of peering arrangement from the perspective of the operator of one of the networks. I find the distinction between ‘transit’ and ‘peering’ a matter of degree whereas the article seems to want to make a hard and fast distinction.

This page is useless.

This is an interesting page but seems to be 10 years out of date. For instance GlobalCenter was merged into another company in 2001. Also the aggregate bandwidth is an order of magnitude too small.

Internet Backbone: Googling this gives more hype than substance. See however some recent politics where substance leaks out inadvertently.

I ran across TierPoint which is a data center with providing 50Gbps connectivity in Eastern Washington. They list ‘Bandwidth Partners’ as 360 Networks; AT&T; Global Crossing; Integra; Noa net; One Eighty Networks; Pacific Northwest GigaPOP; Qwest; Savvis; SGN; Time Warner; XO Communications; Zayo; And Others.

A curious service at http://bgp.he.net/AS12111 with other numbers too. It seems to be topological.
Hurricane Electric seems a promising source. The info at the end of this page bears on routing table size.

Perhaps this describes the real top level topology of the Internet. Of course there may be carriers that connect to few ASes, yet do most of the bit miles.

2016

Google
size of bgp routing tables
https://labs.ripe.net/Members/dbayer/visibility-of-prefix-lengths