AS12684 SES-LUX-AS

A satellite operator holding address space from three regional registries at once, because its coverage does not respect their boundaries.

What it's used for

• Satellite communications and connectivity. 180,736 addresses in 165 IPv4 prefixes, five IPv6 prefixes, and 198 observed BGP neighbours.

Notable

• The blocks come from three different regional registries: 212.165.160.0/20 and 213.169.112.0/20 are European, 64.110.160.0/19 and 216.236.192.0/19 North American, and 122.201.32.0/20 and 210.5.192.0/20 Asia-Pacific.
• Netnames record two acquired companies: SESA1 for SES Americom, and NSS-NETBLOCK-1, NSS-NETBLOCK-3 and NEWSKIES for New Skies Satellites.
• The operator's own allocations are LU-ASTRANET-20020806 and LU-ASTRANET-20021104.
• Two blocks are named for their function: A2C-CUST-EXT and M_PLUS_CPE.
• One IPv6 announcement is 2a02::/32, the first /32 inside 2a02::/16.

Interesting

• Regional registries divide the world into five territories and hand out addresses within them. A satellite covers a third of the planet from one position, so its operator has to hold space in every region it can see, and the routing table ends up describing a footprint drawn by orbital mechanics rather than by geography.
• 198 neighbours against 165 prefixes is a transit profile, not an access one. Selling capacity to networks in places where terrestrial fibre is expensive or absent means peering with each of them, and each of those sessions is a country's worth of connectivity.
• CPE is customer premises equipment, which in this context means a dish. The naming convention carriers use for a modem in a living room turns out to apply unchanged to a receiver pointed at geostationary orbit.