AS9821 DOST-PH-AP Department of Science and Technology

AS9821 (DOST-PH-AP) is held by the Philippines' Department of Science and Technology, and is operated by its Advanced Science and Technology Institute (DOST-ASTI) as PREGINET — the Philippine Research, Education and Government Information Network, the country's only national research and education network.

What it's used for

PREGINET interconnects Philippine universities, research institutes and government agencies, and links them onward to the international REN community — APAN, the AI3 satellite network and TEIN. RIS sees a compact inventory: 3 IPv4 prefixes carrying 9,216 addresses (202.90.128.0/19 plus a /22 and a /24) and one IPv6 /32, 2001:d18::/32. What makes the AS distinctive is the 35 observed BGP neighbours against that small address count. An enterprise or agency network with 9,000 addresses would show two or three. Thirty-five means this network exists to interconnect rather than to serve subscribers — exactly what an NREN does, and what happens when you sit in the middle of a national exchange fabric.

Notable

• DOST-ASTI also operates PHOpenIX, the Philippines' neutral internet exchange, which is where much of that peering breadth comes from. The AS is the REN, not the exchange itself, but the two are run by the same institute.
• IPv6 is native and long-standing here, including multicast support — unusually mature for a network of this size, and characteristic of an R&E network that runs protocols ahead of the commercial market.
• Both government and academic traffic ride the same AS, which is why the registry names the parent department rather than the network brand.