Facebook automates network peering to enable smoother web traffic management SHARE Facebook Inc.’s engineering team today revealed how it overcame one of the most time-consuming problems in networking by automating a process called “network peering” that enables more efficient exchange of internet traffic across various networks and service providers. In a blog post, Facebook engineers Jenny Ramseyer and Jakub Heichman explained that network peering involves sending internet traffic through something called a “peering exchange,” which serves as a common meeting point where lots of networks interconnect by establishing Border Gateway Protocol or BGP sessions between their routers. The peering sessions, as they’re often called, enable networks to establish the fastest, most direct route from an internet server to the user’s internet service provider, helping improve the performance, latency and reliability of the connections.