Internet exchange points (IXP) are like airports, Netrality Data Centers’ Edward Grundhauser says. If you can imagine passengers zipping from location to location between gates, you can understand how content moves around the internet.

If you call up some content on your phone or computer — a Netflix show, for example — your service provider has to pull the content to you. For someone sitting in a Fishtown apartment, for instance, their episode could first travel to Cherry Hill or New York City before streaming on their device.

But IXPs cut down on those travels. They like to keep traffic local. This process is called peering, and it allows networks to connect and exchange traffic between themselves instead of having a third-party service carry it.

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