Packet Clearing House (PCH) was 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.

[9] It has 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 Internet accessibility.

PCH has more than 500 institutional donors, including the Soros Open Society Institute, which funded PCH in developing open source tools which help Internet service providers (ISPs) optimize their traffic routing, reduce costs and increase performance of Internet service delivered to the public;[20] the United Nations Development Programme; Cisco Systems; NTT/Verio; Level 3; Equinix; the governments of Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Mexico, France, Singapore, Chile, Switzerland, and the United States; and hundreds of Internet service providers and individuals.

[21] PCH maintains staffed offices in Paris, Berkeley, Amsterdam, Kathmandu, Budapest, Johannesburg, Abu Dhabi, Portland and Ottawa[22] and operates critical network infrastructure within 303 Internet exchange points.