AS16202 TC-PRIMACOM

Dozens of blocks named after cable headends, with a year and a sequence number that is sometimes padded and sometimes not.

What it's used for

• A cable operator. Eighty-three IPv4 prefixes and three IPv6 prefixes announced from Germany, one hundred and seven thousand five hundred and twenty addresses, through two observed BGP neighbours.

Notable

• Many netnames are an acquired cable brand, the word for the sites where cable plant terminates, a year and a sequence number. The padding is inconsistent: some sequences are a single digit, others are padded with a leading zero.
• The rest use a country code, the current company name and a full date, with dates spanning nine years.
• Two contacts appear on every block, an address contact and an abuse contact, both named for the current company. The company itself is listed on the dated blocks but not on the headend ones.
• Nine of eighteen queried addresses answered. Each name is the four numbers of the address as separate labels with dots between them, then three letters for dynamic, then a third brand's domain.
• Dotted labels rather than hyphens make each name eight labels long.

Interesting

• Naming blocks after headends is a cable operator thinking in physical plant. Each range serves the households fed by one facility, and the year records when that facility needed more addresses.
• Three brands in one record, one in the netnames, one in the contacts and one in the reverse zone, is the ordinary residue of consolidation in a market where cable networks were bought town by town.