AS11741 BENTONREA

BENTONREA is BENTON REA POWERNET — PowerNet, the internet service run by Benton Rural Electric Association, a member-owned electric cooperative headquartered in Prosser, Washington. PowerNet delivered fixed-wireless broadband to the Yakima and Mid-Columbia valleys, serving parts of Benton, Yakima and Lewis counties.

What it's used for

Subscriber internet access for a rural electric co-op's members. RIS sees 2 IPv4 prefixes, 512 addresses, no IPv6, and 3 observed neighbours. Both prefixes, 216.7.32.0/24 and 216.7.33.0/24, are registered in ARIN under the single handle BREA-PNET-1 to BENTON REA POWERNET. Registrant and originator are the same party, so nothing here is leased or third-party space.

The shape is a very small rural ISP and nothing else. Three neighbours means the AS takes transit and originates only its own two /24s; it sells no connectivity onward. The address count is modest even for a WISP, consistent with an operator that puts most subscribers behind carrier-grade NAT and needs public addresses only for the edge and for customers who ask.

Notable

The utility-cooperative-turned-ISP is a recognisable American pattern. Rural electric co-ops were built to run wire to places investor-owned utilities would not serve, and a number of them extended the same logic to broadband decades later, using the poles and rights-of-way they already had.

Interesting

PowerNet was acquired in April 2025 by Advanced High Speed Internet, a locally owned provider in Yakima, which assumed operations. The AS and its address blocks still carry the Benton REA PowerNet registration, so the routing lags the ownership change. That is the usual sequence: BGP and RDAP are the last things to be renamed after a small ISP changes hands, and the name on the AS may not be the name answering the phone.