As enterprises accelerate cloud adoption and migrate more business-critical applications off-premises, they need robust connectivity solutions.
Traditional methods of backhauling traffic through transit providers’ networks have significant drawbacks in flexibility, performance, cost, and reliability as cloud use increases. This is driving growing interest in remote peering as an alternative model.
Remote peering allows organizations to set up direct interconnects between their network and major cloud providers to exchange traffic more optimally. Rather than traversing through third-party transit links, connections are made directly to the provider’s point of presence.
With remote peering, businesses can significantly improve connectivity quality and user experience.
Below, we explore five of the most impactful benefits your company can achieve by incorporating remote peering into your networking strategy:
- Faster Speeds and Lower Latency
The most important benefit enterprises realize from remote peering is improved speed and reduced latency through directly interconnecting their networks with cloud platforms.
Traffic travels the shortest path possible instead of taking indirect paths through third-party networks. Packets have fewer hops to navigate when routes are optimized via direct remote peering relationships.
Transit time reduces substantially with less distance to cover and fewer choke points. This is highly beneficial for applications where lag and delay impact user experience and productivity. Speeds also quicken thanks to the high-bandwidth dedicated links created for remote peering. Rather than sharing transit provider bandwidth, dedicated ports allow full-speed transmission.
Joining Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) can optimize peering by facilitating direct interconnects with diverse networks and cloud providers in an ecosystem. IXP essentially act as peering malls where many partners connect in the exact location to exchange traffic easily. This expands peering possibilities beyond one-to-one arrangements.
- Substantial Cost Savings
Another significant advantage remote peering offers is cost reduction by optimizing cloud interconnection expenses. Traditional methods require purchasing dedicated, high-capacity transit links to adequately access cloud platforms. The monthly fees for provisioning these links via partners vary depending on your traffic loads.
With remote peering, you utilize your network transport to route packets straight to the provider’s point of presence instead. This allows you to maximize the value of bandwidth investments you have already made rather than purchasing dedicated new links.
By peering directly using existing infrastructure, you avoid the sizable transit costs you would otherwise incur for links to cloud access.
Quantitatively, remote peering can reduce overall connectivity costs by half or more, depending on traffic patterns. For larger enterprises shifting significant computing to the cloud, these cost reductions can amount to thousands per month and even more over time as needs scale. The cloud connectivity optimization is a boon for network budgets.
- Greater Network Reliability
Remote peering boosts network reliability by reducing disruptions and outages. Direct private links to top cloud providers are inherently more dependable than handing off traffic to transit network partners. With fewer parties in the chain, there are fewer potential failure points.
Public transit networks also carry more risks of congestion bottlenecks and capacity constraints during peak periods, which can severely compromise reliability. With dedicated remote peering ports, capacity can be scaled precisely to meet internal network demands rather than contending for shared transit resources.
Building resilient remote peering architecture with redundant links across geographically dispersed endpoint locations also limits outage risks. If one connection goes down, traffic seamlessly fails to alternative paths thanks to redundancy mechanisms.
Overall, direct dedicated interconnects dramatically lower the risks of network instability relative to transiting schemes. Remote peering ensures continuous access to critical cloud services so businesses can deliver responsive user experiences without disruption.
- Greater Network Agility and Scalability
Growing cloud usage necessitates network connectivity that is adaptive and scalable to changing requirements over time. Remote peering provides excellent flexibility to scale bandwidth and adjust policies as needs evolve cost-effectively.
Rather than submitting transit link change orders to partners and waiting weeks for adjustments, dedicated remote peering ports can be added or modified in days based on internal demands.
You can implement traffic engineering principles more granularly compared to transiting models. In essence, remote peering puts you entirely in control to customize routing and capacity as the business requires.
With AWS, Azure, and GCP offering remote peering via standardized ports and simplified tools, spinning capacity up or down is easy. Remote peering allows painless scaling as your cloud footprint grows due to new workloads or use cases.
Changes are swift and cost-effective since you only pay for the needed capacity. This agility and scalability unlock the full potential of the cloud’s elasticity.
- Improved Security Posture
Better security is another benefit of direct remote peering compared to legacy transiting approaches. When relying on transit networks, you cede visibility and control over data flows to third parties. With remote peering, connections stay within your defined network paths according to internal segmentation and monitoring policies.
Direct dedicated interconnects also eliminate risks associated with malicious actors potentially accessing company data by tapping into shared transit links. Keeping traffic on private peering links limits exposure points.
Further, remote peering allows you to implement security controls and filtering based on end-to-end policies at peering edge locations. More granular traffic analysis and safeguards are possible, given the dedicated connections. This enhances protection without compromising performance.
Remote peering puts enterprises in the driver’s seat regarding data custody and enabling appropriate security mechanisms. In transit schemes, you must accept “one-size-fits-all” protection.
Conclusion
As the cloud becomes the new normal for enterprise IT infrastructure, networking models must evolve to enable seamless, high-performance access.
Remote peering delivers measurable improvements in connectivity quality, user experience, flexibility, and economics compared to legacy approaches. Following best practices for design and implementation allows companies to maximize the many benefits of direct cloud interconnects.
Enterprises gain a formidable networking foundation by peering remotely to pursue cloud success and support business growth.
