Settlement-Free Peering Policy

1.124/7 Network Operations Center

Both parties shall maintain a fully staffed Network Operations Center that operates and is reachable via phone and e-mail 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

1.2Escalation Path

Both parties shall provide an escalation path for resolving network issues in a timely fashion. Issues of a non-emergency technical nature should be responded to within 48 hours.

1.3Maintenance Notification

Both parties shall make every reasonable effort to provide advance notice of any planned maintenance, and immediate notice of any unplanned outages, affecting any interconnection.

1.4Abuse Response

Both parties shall be responsive to unsolicited bulk email, hacking, Denial of Service, and other network security and abuse issues. A good faith effort should be made to provide a qualified network engineer to trace ongoing network attacks within a reasonable amount of time.

2.1Redundant Backbone

Both parties shall maintain a redundant backbone network with sufficient capacity to minimize queueing and ensure delivery of traffic both during normal and single-failure scenarios. Both parties shall act quickly and diligently to establish additional capacity to proactively accommodate traffic growth.

2.2Consistent Route Announcements

Both parties shall announce consistent routes across all interconnection points unless otherwise agreed to in writing.

2.3Source Address Filtering

Both parties shall make every reasonable effort to restrict the transmission of Denial of Service attacks and packets with forged source addresses from their network.

2.4Prefix Filtering

Peer shall utilize explicit prefix filters limiting the routes which they accept and in turn re-announce to Astound.

2.5Route Scope

Both parties shall announce only their own routes and the routes of their transit customers to the other party. No other routes are permitted, and may be filtered if detected.

2.6No Routing Manipulation

Neither party shall abuse the peering relationship in any way. Neither party shall establish a static route, a route of last resort, or otherwise send traffic to the other party for a route not announced via BGP. Neither party shall alter, sell, or give next-hops to a third party. Neither party shall use the other party's network for transit, or engage in any other routing manipulation that causes the other party's network to provide transit to peers. This would include, but is not limited to, establishing a tunnel between two different peering interconnection points, or announcing to the other the more specific routes of prefixes learned via a third party mutual transit customer.

3.1Public Interconnection

The following thresholds apply for public peering at internet exchange points:

Specific exemptions on traffic levels may be made at Astound's discretion.

3.2Private Interconnection

The following thresholds apply for private peering:

4.1Policy Updates

This policy may be updated from time to time, and Astound reserves the right to modify, replace, or nullify this policy at any time.

4.2Suspension

Any interconnection may be temporarily suspended or disconnected at the sole discretion of either party.

4.3Termination

Any interconnection may be terminated for any reason, with 30 days notice to the other party.