Autonomous system
AS10578 GIGAPOP-NE
Education ARIN Educational/Research
Summary
Northern Crossroads (NoX) / New England GigaPoP
education university research transit legacy
GIGAPOP-NE is registered to Harvard University but is not Harvard's campus network. It is the New England GigaPoP, operated as Northern Crossroads (NoX) — the regional research-and-education aggregation point for New England universities, with MIT and Harvard as anchor institutions and a membership running to a couple dozen colleges and research organisations.
What it's used for
The rDNS is the giveaway: the sampled address resolves to harvard-cps-nox300gw1.nox.org, a NoX gateway router, not a Harvard host. RIS sees 4 IPv4 prefixes carrying 24,832 addresses and 6 IPv6 prefixes, against 19 observed BGP neighbours.
That ratio is the whole story. Nineteen peers against a modest address count is not an eyeball network and not an enterprise — it is an aggregator. NoX exists to hand its member campuses shared upstream connectivity: Internet2 and national R&E backbones, commodity transit, and direct peering with large content networks, bought once at regional scale rather than a dozen times over. Traffic is university research and campus egress; the address space itself is mostly infrastructure.
Notable
Both IPv4 prefixes — 18.2.128.0/19 and 18.2.192.0/19 — sit inside 18.0.0.0/8, MIT's legacy Class A. The GigaPoP was numbered out of a member institution's historic block, which is why a multi-university regional network appears to live in MIT address space.
Interesting
One announced prefix, 2001:504:2e::/48, falls in ARIN's 2001:504::/32 range, which is reserved for exchange-point peering fabrics — the address-level fingerprint of an organisation that runs an interconnect, not just consumes one.
This description is AI-generated, best-effort context — not authoritative, and provided without any guarantee of accuracy. Source, and how to suggest an edit.
Interconnection
Peering at a glance
Internet exchanges
Recorded at 2 exchanges in 1 country, largest first.
| Exchange | Location | Their address |
|---|---|---|
| Boston Internet Exchange | Boston, United States | 206.108.236.3 |
| Massachusetts Internet Exchange | Boston, United States | 206.53.143.18 |
Exchange presence is recorded rather than inferred: the directory collected by Packet Clearing House (https://www.pch.net/ixp/data) on 2026-10-10, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Transit is inferred from observed BGP paths, never declared by either party.
Address space
Summary
IPv4 4 prefixes · 24.83K addresses IPv6 5 prefixes
| Country | Name | Prefixes |
|---|---|---|
| US | United States of America | 9 |
Registry
Allocation record
- Registry
- ARIN
- Handle
AS10578- Registry name
- GIGAPOP-NE
- Registrant
- Harvard University
- Abuse contact
- abuse@harvard.edu
- Registered
- 1997-09-19
- Last changed
- 2025-12-02
- Allocation
- assigned
Declared
PeeringDB profile
- Name
- Northern Crossroads
- Also known as
- NoX
- Network type
- Educational/Research
- Scope
- North America
- Traffic ratio
- Mostly Inbound
- Peering policy
- Selective
- IRR as-set
AS10578:AS-ALL- Present at
- 2 exchanges
- Facilities
- 3 facilities
- Website
- http://www.nox.org
PeeringDB records are maintained by the network operator and are not independently verified. Treat them as a statement of intent rather than of fact. For the observed and recorded view, see peering, which lists the exchanges Packet Clearing House has a port on file for.
Routing security
RPKI and IRR
- RPKI
- 11% valid · 1 valid, 8 with no ROA
- ROAs
- 1 authorising AS10578
- ASPA
- no ASPA record
- IRR
- 78% registered · 7 of 9 announcements
- Route objects
- 7 naming AS10578
Reputation
Classification and threat
Education University, school or national research and education network.
Spamhaus DROP
Not on ASN-DROP The network as a whole is not listed.
No DROP prefixes None of its announced space is on the DROP prefix list.
Spamhaus DROP ("Don't Route Or Peer") lists space and networks run by, or hijacked for, spam and cybercrime operations: 431 networks and 1,775 prefixes, as published 2026-10-11. A short, high-confidence list, so a match is worth taking seriously, and absence from it says little on its own.
FBI IC3
No IC3 indicators Nothing from the FBI IC3 feed.
IC3 threat data is alpha. Absence of an indicator is not evidence of good behaviour, only of absence from this one feed.
Elsewhere