AS10966 ALASKA-AIR

ALASKA-AIR is Alaska Airlines, Inc., the Seattle-based US carrier. The AS is small and self-contained: RIS observes 3 IPv4 prefixes covering 768 addresses (159.49.47.0/24, 159.49.46.0/24 and 159.49.255.0/24), no IPv6, and 1 observed neighbour.

What it's used for

This is a corporate enterprise network. Three /24s drawn from the same 159.49.0.0 range and a single upstream is the profile of a company that holds provider-independent address space for its own internet-facing systems and business connectivity, not one that routes traffic for anyone else. An airline's operational technology, the reservation and departure-control systems that actually run the flying, largely lives on private networks and industry-specific data links rather than in publicly routed space, so what appears in BGP here is a small slice of the company's total IT estate.

Notable

The single observed neighbour is the most telling number on the card. A company of Alaska Airlines' size will have substantial connectivity, but almost all of it evidently reaches the internet under other autonomous systems, most likely those of its cloud and hosting providers. What remains under its own ASN is a legacy corner of address space that has been kept rather than grown.

Interesting

No PTRs were returned on the addresses sampled, and no IPv6 is announced. Neither is a finding in itself, but together they fit the picture of an enterprise AS that has been maintained rather than actively developed.