In this episode of PING, Stephen Song discusses his work mapping the Internet. This is a long-term project, which he carries out alongside and supported by Mozilla Corporation, and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC).

Stephen has long championed the case for Open Data in telecommunications decision-making and maintains a list of resources for capacity building and development of the Internet with a particular focus on Africa.

The combination of some opaque business practices and the change from end delivery to mediated proxies from the content distribution network model raises questions about where the things users engage with and depend on are, so network infrastructure can be efficiently and openly planned. The latest episode of PING explores the issues inherent in understanding ‘where things are’ in the modern Internet.

Explore Stephen’s resources:

• Many Possibilities website
• Connectivity indexes, maps, and reports (GitHub)
• Open Data map of Content Distribution Networks around the world
• After Fibre
• Village Telco