AS11967 HOP179

HOP179 is Hop179, a small operator-friendly connectivity provider that runs as Hop179 OÜ in Estonia and Hop179 LLC in Arizona. Its stated purpose is helping IPv6 enthusiasts and hobby networks get on the internet, and its routing matches that description closely.

What it's used for

• Community IPv6 connectivity, tunnels and small-scale VM hosting. The AS announces only 1,024 IPv4 addresses but 18 IPv6 prefixes — an inverted ratio that almost no commercial network shows, and the clearest possible evidence that IPv6 is the product rather than an afterthought.
• Reverse DNS backs this up: atun.hop179.net on its own space is tunnel infrastructure, and other addresses carry unrelated third-party hostnames, consistent with sub-allocating small blocks and VMs to the hobbyists it serves.

Notable

• 142 observed neighbours against 1,024 IPv4 addresses. Neighbour count is the role signal, and this ratio is emphatically not an eyeball or enterprise network: it is an operator whose value is in peering breadth, present at many exchange points, carrying other people's small networks rather than its own traffic.
• One announced prefix, 44.32.91.0/24, is registered to Amateur Radio Digital Communications — a slice of the ham-radio 44/8 space. That is not a third-party-registrant red flag; it is exactly what an operator serving hobby networks would carry, and it corroborates the rest of the picture.

Interesting

• The IPv4 prefixes span ARIN (130.12, 23.133) and the IPv6 spans both ARIN and RIPE ranges, consistent with the two legal entities on two continents.