Autonomous system
AS12041 AS-AFILIAS1
Hosting ARIN
Summary
Afilias
dns anycast infrastructure legacy
Afilias ran the registry back end for a large share of the domain name system, including .info and the technical operation of .org, before being absorbed into Identity Digital.
What it's used for
- Authoritative and anycast DNS for top-level domain registries, plus the registry systems that sit behind them.
Notable
- The IPv6 space is the giveaway. The announcements sit in
2001:500::/xx— the range IANA set aside for root and TLD nameserver operators — across blocks like2001:500:b::/48and2001:500:16::/47. That is not general hosting space; it is name server space. - 159 IPv4 prefixes and 140 IPv6 prefixes for only 119,000 addresses, most of them /22s and /23s. Anycast DNS looks exactly like this: many small prefixes announced from many places at once, so the address count stays low while the prefix count climbs.
- 79 observed BGP neighbours. An anycast operator wants to be as few hops as possible from everyone, so it peers widely rather than buying transit from a couple of carriers.
Interesting
- Every block traces back to Afilias under
AFILIAS-NETnetnames even though the company itself no longer exists under that name, having been bought by Donuts in 2020 and folded into what is now Identity Digital. The registry paperwork outlives the brand.
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 23 exchanges in 13 countries, largest first.
| Exchange | Location | Their address |
|---|---|---|
| DE-CIX Frankfurt | Frankfurt, Germany | 80.81.194.2 |
| LINX LON1 | London, United Kingdom | 195.66.224.55 |
| AMS-IX Amsterdam | Amsterdam, Netherlands | 80.249.208.190 |
| Neutral Internet Exchange | Amsterdam, Netherlands | 193.239.116.185 |
| Milan Internet Exchange | Milan, Italy | 217.29.66.124 |
| Equinix Internet Exchange Ashburn | Ashburn, United States | 206.126.236.41 |
| Coresite - Any2 West | Los Angeles, United States | 206.72.211.34 |
| Any2 California | Los Angeles, United States | 206.72.211.34 |
Transit providers
26 upstream, 0 downstream and 41 adjacent networks observed; most-used upstreams first.
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 159 prefixes · 119K addresses IPv6 140 prefixes
| Country | Name | Prefixes |
|---|---|---|
| US | United States of America | 299 |
Registry
Allocation record
- Registry
- ARIN
- Handle
AS12041- Registry name
- AS-AFILIAS1
- Registrant
- Afilias, Inc.
- Abuse contact
- Howard@identity.digital
- Registered
- 2006-10-19
- Last changed
- 2018-09-13
- Allocation
- assigned
Routing security
RPKI and IRR
- RPKI
- 99.3% valid · 453 valid, 3 with no ROA
- ROAs
- 718 authorising AS12041
- ASPA
- no ASPA record
- IRR
- 99.6% registered · 454 of 456 announcements 2 other origin
- Route objects
- 949 naming AS12041
Reputation
Classification and threat
Hosting Datacenter or cloud provider. Addresses are servers, not people.
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