AS14325 OSHEAN

One AS number carrying address space registered to a state, a school network and a university.

What it's used for

• A regional research and education network. 109,568 addresses across 28 IPv4 prefixes plus one IPv6 prefix, 2607:d00::/32, with 32 observed BGP neighbours.

Notable

• The 131.109 blocks carry the netname RINET, registered to Rhode Island Network for Educ. Technology.
• The 158.123 blocks carry the netname RI, registered to State of Rhode Island.
• 66.181.224.0/20 carries the netname JWUEDU.
• The 198.7 blocks carry OSHEAN-BLK-1, registered to the AS holder itself.
• Eighteen addresses were queried for reverse DNS and none returned a name.

Interesting

• Four netnames, four different institutions, one announcement. A regional network like this one does not own most of the addresses it routes; it aggregates space that its members registered for themselves, sometimes decades earlier, and announces it on their behalf. The registry still shows who asked.
• Thirty-two neighbours for 109,568 addresses is a lot of adjacency for a small amount of space. Research networks peer widely because their value is reach rather than volume, and because the institutions on the far end are peers rather than customers.
• The registrant records include separate operations, technical and abuse contacts, which is the filing style of an organisation that expects to be contacted about its addresses by people who are not its customers.
• The state government's blocks and the education network's blocks sit under one AS but were never merged in the registry, so the two remain separately accountable for their own space.