How One ISP Flipped Transit-to-CDN from 10% to 90% (Midco's Peering Playbook)
"When we started, maybe ten percent of our traffic went to a CDN. Now it's ninety percent on the CDNs or local caches and ten percent goes to transit. We've really flipped the whole script." — John Lubeck, Midco
How does a regional ISP go from 10% CDN/cache traffic to 90% in a few years? In this customer story, John Lubeck, Director of Core IP and Transport at Midco, explains how the team uses Kentik to identify which content providers to peer with, plan capacity with real circuit costs (including burst charges above committed rates), and automate the reporting that goes to finance. The result: hours of manual digging compressed into seconds, plus measurable ROI from a true single pane of glass.
Midco's network is streaming-heavy — Thursday Night Football, Super Bowl, plus the constant grind of OTT video traffic. Kentik's service-provider-specific capabilities let the team make peering and caching decisions with confidence, and free up engineers to do real network engineering instead of cobbling together reports across disconnected tools.
What Midco uses Kentik for:
- Identifying which content providers and CDNs to peer with based on actual traffic patterns
- Capacity planning with real circuit costs (committed rate plus burst charges)
- Automated reporting to the finance team (no more manual report assembly)
- Live event traffic management (Thursday Night Football, Super Bowl, streaming events)
- Offloading as much traffic as possible to local caches and CDNs vs. paid transit
- Self-serve answers for engineers — questions answered in seconds instead of hours
Learn more about Kentik for Service Providers: https://www.kentik.com/product/service-provider/
─── RELATED RESOURCES ───
📊 Hear more from Midco and other customers:
- "Not Having Kentik Is Unacceptable": 5 Service Providers on Kentik: https://youtu.be/6lrXB5CJiGs
- 3 Service Providers on Kentik AI Advisor: Faster Answers, Faster Fixes: https://youtu.be/Y-cWHdIBE9g
- How Conway Corporation Reduced Tool Sprawl with Kentik: https://youtu.be/hqj0kFRDge4
- Kentik Helps MetroNet Keep Transit Costs Flat as Traffic Grows: https://youtu.be/_9SfOTz-S54
- How Imperva Gets Traffic Answers in Seconds with Kentik: https://youtu.be/ZfYlncWH6_s
- How Race Communications Automates DDoS Mitigation with Kentik: https://youtu.be/E11jtyrtFLs
📊 Related Kentik content on peering and CDN analytics:
- How to Analyze Network Traffic Costs: https://youtu.be/zxaO5vihQd8
- What Is Network Intelligence? (with NetMavens and Seaborn Networks): https://youtu.be/kkw0fl6KloU
- Evaluating Traffic at IXes and Data Centers with PeeringDB Filters: https://youtu.be/d5kGeaEA7Qo
- Kentik OTT and CDN Analytics: https://youtu.be/sX7jKgRUGgI
🔗 Learn more on kentik.com:
- Kentik for Service Providers: https://www.kentik.com/product/service-provider/
- Kentik for Peering and Interconnection: https://www.kentik.com/product/peering-and-interconnection/
- Optimize Peering and Transit: https://www.kentik.com/solutions/optimize-peering-and-transit/
- Kentipedia: https://www.kentik.com/kentipedia/
─── ABOUT KENTIK ───
Kentik is the network intelligence platform for modern infrastructure teams. Kentik provides network observability, DDoS protection, cloud cost optimization, BGP monitoring, and AI-powered network analytics for enterprise, cloud, and service provider networks.
🔗 Start a free trial: https://www.kentik.com/go/get-started/
🔗 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@KentikHQ
#Kentik #Midco #ISP #Peering #CDN #ContentDelivery #ServiceProvider #NetworkIntelligence
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Why Midco Needed a Tool to Find the Right Content Partners to Peer With
0:23 Capacity Planning with Real Circuit Costs (Including Burst Charges)
0:37 Automated Reporting to Finance — No More Manual Reports
0:49 A Service-Provider-Specific Tool That Fit Midco's Needs
0:58 Using Kentik for Traffic Patterns, OTT, and CDN Offload
1:13 Managing Live Event Traffic: Thursday Night Football and Super Bowl
1:24 Self-Serve Answers for Engineers in Seconds Instead of Hours
1:33 The 10/90 Flip: From 10% CDN to 90% CDN/Cache Traffic
1:55 Measuring ROI Through Operational Efficiency
2:12 Single Pane of Glass: Freeing Engineers to Do Real Engineering