| I am aware of paying for transit, which allows you to access larger swaths of the Internet through someone else's (better connected) network. But if I am with an ISP A, and I want to watch something on YouTube, then given that I am paying my ISP for connecting me to "the Internet", and YT is on "the Internet", how/why would YT pay the ISP anything? How exactly would an ISP charge a CDN, YT, or Netflix? The content distributors simply connect to the Internet and advertise via BGP: besides paying their own ISP(s), how would a content provider pay a 'distant ISP'? If a content provider is willing to pay for dark fibre and install their own gear into IXPs, how would any ISP issue an invoice to the CDN(s)? And the "transit exchange" at VanIX seems to be separate from the open peering option available by simply advertising to the router servers. From the sentence right before the one you quote: > When these conditions are met, and a contractual structure exists to create a market to purchase network services, the IXP is sometimes called a "transit exchange". * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point#Traffi... TorIX has the majority of participants doing simple peering: > The Exchange also offers two BGP Route-Servers, which allow peers to exchange prefixes with each other while minimizing the number of direct BGP peering sessions configured on their routers.[3] Participation is voluntary, with approximately 85 percent of the membership using the free service. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Internet_Exchange |