AS16564 ADAMS-WELLS-INTERNET

Two address ranges, two netname styles, two access technologies, and the split lines up exactly.

What it's used for

• A rural provider's network. Nine IPv4 prefixes announced from the United States, no IPv6, eight thousand one hundred and ninety-two addresses, through two observed BGP neighbours.

Notable

• Every block belongs to the provider, but the netnames come in two families. One range carries the company's initials, the word for a network, and a numeral two. The other carries the full company name, two letters for a block of addresses, and a numeral one.
• The two families never mix. Each covers its own range, split into blocks of four different sizes.
• The AS handle writes the company as two hyphenated words; the holder and every registrant write it as one.
• Seven of eighteen queried addresses answered. Those on the first range carry a three-letter label for a subscriber line; those on the second carry a label for a dialled connection followed by a place name squeezed to seven letters.
• The access-technology labels follow the same split as the netnames.

Interesting

• A provider whose paperwork, addressing and naming all divide the same way has grown in two distinct purchases, and never merged the halves. The division survives because nothing forces a rewrite.
• A place name compressed to seven letters is the oldest kind of network shorthand: enough to tell two exchanges apart, and no more than fits.
• Eight thousand addresses through two upstreams is a small provider that bought a second carrier and stopped there.