Measures To Enhance The Characterization Of Internet Exchange Points

The reliability of data transport on the Internet is one of the objectives of researchers in the field of computer science. Data such as videos and audio is becoming increasingly large. Therefore, transporting them over the Internet is becoming difficult. It has therefore been important to establish a method of locally interconnecting autonomous systems (AS) with each other to facilitate the exchange of traffic: Internet Exchange Points (IXP). They play an important role, there is much to be done to understand their impact on the Internet, and IXP characterization is an important step in this direction. An AS will choose to connect to an IXP based on some characteristics, and identifying relevant characteristics remains a challenge. They provide an almost complete status of an IXP while detailing its evolution, which is very important for the members of the IXP and possibly for other actors such as ISPs who would like to connect to it. In this paper, we propose six measures to enhance IXP characterization. There is the attraction rate, the peering rate, the number of IXP interconnections (national, regional and international), the objective rate, an IXP's resistance rate, and attraction failure rate. These measures provide more relevant characteristics than the previous ones. They allow one to have an almost complete status of an IXP while detailing its evolution, which is very important for the IXP members and eventually for other actors such as Internet access providers who would like to connect to it.