Packet Clearing House - Overview

Overview

Packet Clearing House was originally formed in 1994 by Chris Alan and Mark Kent to provide efficient regional and local network interconnection alternatives for the west coast of the United States. It has since grown to become a leading proponent of neutral independent network interconnection and provider of route-servers at major exchange points worldwide. PCH provides equipment, training, data, and operational support to organizations and individual researchers seeking to improve the quality, robustness, and accessibility of the Internet.

As of 2013, major PCH projects include the construction and support of more than a third of the world's approximately 350 Internet Exchange Points (IXPs); operation of the INOC-DBA global Internet infrastructure protection hotline communications system; support for globally anycast domain name system (DNS) resources including root nameservers and more than one hundred and thirty Top Level Domains (TLDs); operation of the only FIPS 140-2 Level 4 global TLD DNSSEC key management and signing infrastructure, with facilities in Singapore, Zurich, and San Jose; implementation of network research data collection initiatives in more than three dozen countries; and the development and presentation of educational materials to foster a better understanding of Internet architectural principles and their policy implications among policy makers, technologists, and the general public. PCH sponsors include the Soros Open Society Institute, which funded PCH in the development of open-source software tools which assist Internet service providers (ISPs) in optimizing the routing of their traffic, reducing the cost and increasing the performance of Internet service as delivered to the public; the United Nations Development Programme, Cisco Systems, NTT/Verio, Level 3, the governments of Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Mexico, France, Singapore, Chile, Switzerland, and the United States, and hundreds of Internet Service Providers and individuals.

According to its web site, PCH maintains offices in San Francisco, Berkeley, London, Kathmandu, Buenos Aires, Lima and Port of Spain.

PCH works closely with the United States Telecommunications Training Institute (USTTI) to offer courses on telecommunications regulation, Internet infrastructure construction and management, domain name system management, and Internet security coordination, three times yearly in Washington D.C., in addition to the eighty to one hundred workshops PCH teaches on-location throughout the world each year.