AS4297 CENTURYLINK-MTIPS4-HLR

CENTURYLINK-MTIPS4-HLR is held by CenturyLink Communications, LLC (now part of Lumen) and carries its MTIPS service — Managed Trusted Internet Protocol Service, the US General Services Administration programme that gives federal agencies an internet connection compliant with the Trusted Internet Connections (TIC) initiative.

What it's used for

• Secure, monitored internet gateways for US federal agencies. MTIPS providers operate the TIC access points and the collection network that insulates an agency's internal network from the public internet, with the traffic inspection and reporting the programme mandates.

Notable

• A government-facing address block operated by a commercial carrier: the holder is Lumen, but the space exists to serve federal agencies under GSA's Networx and EIS contract vehicles.
• Lumen/CenturyLink is one of the carriers that has passed GSA's TIC assessment and authorisation process and is approved to sell MTIPS.
• The footprint is small and tightly scoped — a handful of contiguous /24s — which is what a set of gateway portals looks like, as opposed to a subscriber access network.

Interesting

• The HLR suffix is an internal CenturyLink site code, and MTIPS4 suggests one of several parallel MTIPS autonomous systems rather than a single monolithic one.