Editing Peering (section)

===Private peering===
'''Private peering''' is the direct interconnection between only two networks, across a Layer 1 or 2 medium that offers dedicated capacity that is not shared by any other parties. Early in the history of the Internet, many private peers occurred across "telco" provisioned [[SONET]] circuits between individual carrier-owned facilities. Today, most private interconnections occur at [[Colocation centre|carrier hotel]]s data centers<ref>https://www.datacenterfrontier.com/colo/article/55125540/data-center-tours-equinix-dc12-ashburn-virginia</ref> or carrier neutral colocation facilities, where a direct crossconnect can be provisioned between participants within the same building, usually for a much lower cost than telco circuits.

Most of the traffic on the Internet, especially traffic between the largest networks, occurs via private peering. However, because of the resources required to provision each private peer, many networks are unwilling to provide private peering to "small" networks, or to "new" networks which have not yet proven that they will provide a mutual benefit.