AS12827 WIRTUALNAPOLSKA GDANSK, Poland

One of Poland's original web portals, on four adjacent blocks and a netname stamped November 1999.

What it's used for

• The network of a Polish internet portal and media group. 5,632 addresses across four IPv4 prefixes, five observed BGP neighbours, and no IPv6 announced.

Notable

• The inventory is 212.77.96.0/20, 212.77.112.0/23, 212.77.116.0/23 and 212.77.120.0/23.
• The /20 carries the netname PL-CNT-991119; two of the /23s are WPPL3 and WPPL4.
• The registry lookup for 212.77.112.0/23 failed, so nothing here describes that block's record.
• The AS handle is WIRTUALNAPOLSKA GDANSK, Poland.
• One of twelve sampled addresses returned a name: fallback.videostar.pl.

Interesting

• 991119 uses a two-digit year, the format the registry abandoned soon afterwards. Another Polish holder in this same range carries 991123, four days later. Two portals filed their paperwork in the same week of November 1999, and both records still show it.
• PL-CNT names neither the company nor its brand. It is the abbreviation of whatever the business called itself in 1999, preserved through every subsequent rename because netnames are written once and rarely revised.
• WPPL3 and WPPL4 are sequence numbers. When an organisation outgrows its first block it usually stops inventing names and starts counting, which is why the tidy allocations tend to be the oldest ones and the numbered ones tend to be the growth.
• A hostname called fallback is a piece of operational history left in public. It was the address something pointed at when the ordinary path failed, and it outlived the service.