Where is RP on the Global Net Map?

The Philippines is just a point on the global Internet map – and sometimes, it doesn’t even show up at all.

But small as the Philippine Internet is compared to more advanced countries, it still needs to be accurately mapped, so that policymakers can see where potential problems may lie, and for Internet service providers (ISPs) to provide better services to the estimated 900,000 Filipinos who go online regularly.

Efforts to produce accurate maps of the Philippine Internet have been spearheaded by the academic community. The latest of these initiatives is the work done by Gino LV Ledesma, a graduating Computer Science student from the Ateneo De Manila University.

In his thesis "Mapping the Philippine Internet Using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)," Ledesma shows how the Philippines is too small to be seen on global Internet maps. He also shows how the lack of tools to monitor the state of the Philippine Internet can limit its growth.

Ledesma’s research seeks to know what the Philippine Internet looks like to provide ISPs and researchers a tool to monitor the state of Internet in the country, and as a starting point for related studies.

According to Ledesma, attempts to visualize the Internet started in the United States in 1998, and were aimed at determining its state in terms of size, growth and trends. As the Internet grows, he says, ISPs are challenged to improve their services and look for tools to monitor traffic usage and uptime or downtime of service, and to count website visits and e-mail usage, among other things.

"Basically, ISPs need tools to determine Internet connectivity, who’s up and who’s down," Ledesma adds.

But the tools are still lacking, if not missing, especially ones that focus on subsets and islands of networks such as those that characterize the Philippine Internet map.

For his research, Ledesma used the graphing tool BGP, which is widely used by most ISPs to exchange routing information. BGP gives researchers a flexible tool to conduct routing studies such as Internet traffic patterns, for example, Ledesma says.

Ledesma’s research follows the earlier work of local Internet research proponents William Yu and Miguel Paraz on Philippine Internet Content Performance Metrics. Although he feels there’s been little interest from the research community, he is looking at collaborating with the PREGINET Network WeatherMap project of the Department of Science and Technology-Advanced Science and Technology Institute.

PREGINET is a nationwide broadband network that links academic, research and government institutions in the Philippines for R&D and applications development activities related to distance education, telemedicine, agriculture, disaster monitoring and network technologies. WeatherMap is a geographical map with traffic information on PREGINET.

Abroad, Internet mapping projects offer the industry route views, matrix maps and even an atlas of cyberspace. CAIDA or the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis is one of the leaders in making available tools and analyses to promote a robust, scalable global Internet infrastructure.

Ledesma says he will continue working with other tools like those from CAIDA to come up with a complete Philippine Internet resource website that can generate real-time maps that are more graphically interesting and use Web-based interactive tools.

Ledesma’s work is among those cited for the 2002-2003 Dean’s Awards for Outstanding Student Research.