A Tier 2 Carrier is one which pays for transit or Peering and purchases only from Tier 1 carrier. Tier 2 providers are the most common providers on the Internet as it is much easier to purchase transit from a Tier 1 carrier than it is to peer with them and push into becoming a Tier 1 carrier.

Many people are of the opinion that Tier 2 carriers are more stable and cost less than Tier 1 carriers, but that isn t always true. Tier 2 carriers may not have redundent fiber paths and may not have multiple nodes. They may even use just one Tier 1 carrier, limiting them to bouncing back up in a fiber cut or outage by that provider. Of course, there are Tier 2 carriers who use multiple providers and are more stable than other Tier 2 carriers.

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