AS10798 SBICSA

SBICSA belongs to The Standard Bank of South Africa (Pty) Ltd, the Johannesburg-headquartered bank at the centre of Standard Bank Group and one of Africa's largest financial institutions. RIS sees 83 IPv4 prefixes carrying 21,248 addresses, no IPv6, and 28 observed neighbours.

What it's used for

The bank's own internet edge across its African footprint. Almost the entire announcement set is /24s carved out of 196.8.0.0/16, legacy Southern African space, with a small amount of ARIN legacy space in 166.85.16.0/24 and 166.85.18.0/24. What is routed is bank infrastructure: internet and mobile banking front ends, branch and ATM connectivity, corporate and partner links, mail and remote access. Nothing in the set looks like resold or hosted third-party space.

Notable

28 neighbours is high for an enterprise of 21,000 addresses, and that is the interesting part rather than an anomaly. Standard Bank operates in a long list of African countries where there is no single carrier that can serve them all, so the bank buys local transit country by country and ends up peering with a spread of national incumbents and regional providers. A US enterprise of the same size typically shows two or three neighbours.

Interesting

The handle is an artefact of corporate history: SBIC is Standard Bank Investment Corporation, the name the group carried before it became Standard Bank Group. The routing is also entirely IPv4. For a bank operating across a continent where mobile-first internet growth has been fastest, the absence of any IPv6 announcement is notable.