Palestine Internet Connectivity as Seen in BGP

Nov 21, 2023 ·

Palestine's internet connectivity has been improving steadily in recent years. According to the latest Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) data from the RIPE NCC Labs, Palestine is currently connected to the global Internet by four independent networks and seven providers.

The four networks are: AS201368 (Palnet), AS204324 (Al-Mada), AS62097 (PalTel) and AS65541 (Motah). In total, they have 66 BGP peering sessions with 39 different providers. This large number of connections gives Palestine strong resilience and reliability against disruption or outages.

Palnet and Al-Mada both have two points of presence in The Netherlands with onward connections to London, Berlin and Frankfurt. This provides fast latency and good performance for international traffic. The PalTel and Motah networks also have onward connections inside Palestine, while Motah connects to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, providing a direct link to Asian countries. All four networks also have direct connections to Jordan, allowing more direct access to African and other Middle Eastern countries.

Overall, the BGP data shows that Palestine has improved its Internet connectivity significantly over the last few years, with both increased resiliency and improved performance. The data also indicates that there is still room for improvement, given that full coverage of the region is still missing.