Quo vadis Open-IX?

The recently launched initiative by the Open-IX Association (OIX) to establish the European-style Internet eXchange Point (IXP)model in the US suggests an intriguing strategy to tackle a problem that some Internet stakeholders in the US consider to be detrimental to their business; i.e., a lack of diversity in available peering opportunities. We examine in this paper the cast of Internet stakeholders that are bound to play a critical role in determining the fate of this Open-IX effort. These include the large content and cloud providers, CDNs, Tier-1 ISPs, the well-established and some of the newer commercial datacenter and colocation companies, and the largest IXPs in Europe. In particular, we comment on these different parties' current attitudes with respect to public and private peering and discuss some of the economic arguments that will ultimately determine whether or not the currently pursued strategy by OIX will succeed in achieving the main OIX-articulated goal -- a more level playing field for private and public peering in the US such that the actual demand and supply for the different peering opportunities will be reflected in the cost structure.