AS15123 FBEMC-ASN - French Broad EMC

An electric cooperative selling broadband, under three names and a fourth in DNS.

What it's used for

• A rural electric cooperative's broadband network. Three IPv4 prefixes announced from the United States, no IPv6, and two observed BGP neighbours.

Notable

• The three blocks carry three netnames: FBEMC, FBEMC2, and FBE-4-NET-72-250-232-0-24, the last encoding an address-family digit, the network address and its prefix length as separate segments.
• The registrant on that third block spells the cooperative out as an electric company while the other two use the initialism, so the same holder appears under two names.
• All three sampled addresses from one block answered, as host-72-250-232-64.ercbroadband.org, under a broadband brand that matches neither the netnames nor either registrant spelling.
• The AS handle adds the object type to the initialism, making a fourth rendering.

Interesting

• Four identifiers for one cooperative, each in a different field, is the ordinary result of a utility adding a line of business. The electric side registered the addresses, the broadband side runs the DNS, and nothing in the record connects the two names.
• Writing the prefix length into a netname as a trailing segment reads as precise and is the least durable thing in the record: the length changes with any reassignment and the name does not.
• Electric cooperatives carrying internet service are a large part of rural coverage, and this record is what that looks like from the outside: small announcements, a utility's name on the paperwork, and a consumer brand in reverse DNS.