AS15211 SQUARE

Blocks in three registries, two corporate names, and one reverse name that gives up the VLAN number.

What it's used for

• A payments company's network. Five IPv4 prefixes and three IPv6 prefixes announced from the United States, with three observed BGP neighbours.

Notable

• The five IPv4 blocks come from three different regional registries, and each registry's netname convention is visible: a name with a counter, a name with a region suffix, and a name prefixed by country code and suffixed with a date.
• One registrant field names the company under its later corporate name while the others still name it under the earlier one, so a single network is registered under two companies.
• One registrant lists an incident response team handle alongside the company; another lists an operations group; another an abuse contact. Three registries, three ideas of who to contact.
• The three IPv6 announcements likewise come from three unrelated ranges, at three different lengths.
• One of fifteen sampled addresses answered: vlan-151-self01.slb01b.sjc1b.squareup.com.

Interesting

• That single name is dense. It gives a VLAN number, marks the address as a load balancer's own interface, numbers the balancer, and names a site with a facility code. Anyone mapping the network gets the internal topology for the cost of one lookup.
• Holding space in three registries is what a company does when it operates in three regions, and it guarantees the records will never agree. Each registry validates its own fields, none reconciles with the others, and the corporate rename reached only one of them.