If you’ve reviewed the route server looking glass, you may have noticed that not every exchange customer uses the route server. This could be the case because some networks have a selective or restrictive peering policy. This means that there is a higher peering potential for your ASN. Typically you reach a foundation of around 60 to 70% of the members via the route server.

There is therefore an additional potential of 30+% more peers. In terms of traffic, this could actually mean even much more than 30% of additional traffic, since the larger networks are often not peering via the route server.

Please have a look at the exchanges’ looking glasses to verify which members are and are not available via the route server.

Visit the PeeringDB records of these members to get information about who to contact at each company and the status of their peering policy. To save time, you can

skip the members with a "closed" or “restrictive policy” and focus on the ones with an open or selective policy.

Please take into account that not every member responds quickly or at the first request. Remember to be patient, and plan to make this an ongoing project to continuously update the list of open peering targets.

And do not forget IPv6 in this process.