hmm... try telling that to Patrick Gilmore, the peering coordinator for akamai - one of the most vocal peering guys in europe.

how long ago was it that peering was a dirty word for akamai?

We peer with Akamai in the US and Japan as well as running various clusters on our own network - they, like most content networks peer quicker than a thirsty Australian runs for a beer.

In the US/Europe/Japan they seem to run clusters in their own right, but elsewhere in the costly bandwidth nations (ie.  all of us in the Pacific RIM) they tend to give the clusters to us all then make us pay to fill the caches.

MMC
-- 
Matthew Moyle-Croft Internode/Agile Peering and Core Networks
Level 4, 150 Grenfell Street, Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia
Email: mmc@internode.com.au    Web: http://www.on.net