Enterprise Companies and ISPs
By Vince
In late 2020 I decided to do a slight career shift from working in the enterprise world (Financials, Small Businesses) to the ISP space.
An ISP (Internet Service Provider) is how consumers and businesses access the internet. If you are reading this, you are going through one of many ISPs.
I am now on the other side of the fence, and it has been a wild ride! It really is amazing to see how the internet works and what “it” is. The internet can be fragile and remarkably adaptive at the same time.
The internet is basically a bunch of different companies connected together sharing IP addresses. When you go to a website, that just gets translated into an IP address, which points to a server somewhere that has what you want to see. ISPs connect to other networks which sometimes connect directly to the content you seek, sometimes they send the traffic to a neighbor that says they know where the content is.
BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is the main network application that shares these IP addresses between ISPs.
Some great resources on how an ISP is built: Dr Peering
ISPs are built on the concept of “peerings”. Each ISP peers with content providers and other ISPs so they can reach every IP address available. Eventually the ISP becomes large enough so that other networks start using them to access content.
Once the ISP reaches an “elite” status, they are considered a Tier 1 ISP.
Tier 1’s don’t have to pay for access to anything (settlement-free), they are the Internet. This typically happens when more traffic needs to access their network than they need to access others.
I am continuing the learn every day which is very important to me and I hope you too!