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Level 3 Communications (News - Alert), a provider of IP-based communications services to enterprise, content, government and wholesale customers, announced its revised peering policy for Internet Protocol traffic exchanged within the United States.

Aimed at accommodating a rapidly changing Internet, the new policy is available on Level 3's website at http://www.level3.com/Legal/IP-Traffic-Exchange-Policy.

The revised IP interconnection policy is expected to address questions raised by the Department of Justice during its review of Level 3's acquisition of Global Crossing (News - Alert).  

"For too long, peering practices between Internet carriers has focused solely on the commercial needs of the carriers," said Jack Waters, chief technology officer for Level 3, in a statement. "We believe that the focus should be on customers, and that carriers must attempt to structure and implement fair and equitable interconnection relationships and practices that are designed to deliver fast, secure, reliable and quickly scalable Internet services to customers.”

According to the revised policy, there will be four overarching principles that will be focused by Level 3 to control all next-generation peering arrangements.

The principal aim of a peering arrangement is to enable each party to deliver high-quality service to its Internet customers.

Level3’s second overarching principle says that the interconnection architecture and traffic exchange practices of each party should assure that the exchange of traffic is resilient, secure and scalable.

According to the third overarching principle, the parties should work together to implement routing practices and adjust location of interconnection points. Each party should bear a reasonably equal share of backbone burdens. This is an important aspect considering the amount of traffic carried by each party and the distance over which that traffic is carried.

Any termination or modification of a peering arrangement should be managed by both parties in a manner that minimizes adverse impacts to each party's customers and the overall operation of the Internet, according to the fourth overarching principle.

Recently, Telx, an interconnection and data center provider in North America, announced that Level 3 will be extending its network services into Telx's data center located in Clifton, New Jersey. The expansion will assist in the high demand from Telx enterprise customers for high bandwidth IP voice, data and video network services.