AS6122 ICN-AS

ICN-AS is the Iowa Communications Network, an independent state agency that runs Iowa's statewide fibre-optic network. It is a public network serving institutions, not a commercial ISP selling to the general public.

What it's used for

• Data, internet, security and voice service to the users the Iowa Code authorises: K-12 schools, higher education, hospitals and clinics, state and federal government offices, National Guard armories, and public libraries.
• The network spans all 99 Iowa counties, and its address footprint reflects that scale: several class-B-sized blocks including 165.206.0.0/16, 209.56.0.0/16, 207.28.0.0/16, 207.165.0.0/16 and 205.221.0.0/16, totalling well over 300,000 IPv4 addresses.

Notable

• Addresses here are institutional, not residential: an IP in this space is far more likely to be a school, a clinic, a library or a state office than a home. Ordinary Iowans get their home broadband from commercial carriers, not from the ICN.
• The mix of eligible users means the same ASN carries education, healthcare and government traffic at once, which makes any single-label classification of the space imperfect.
• ARIN's registration for the ASN dates to November 1995, matching the network's early-1990s build-out.

Interesting

• The ICN was authorised in 1989 and became operational in 1993, originally built to carry full-motion video to every county in the state for distance learning. It was a statewide fibre project years ahead of most of the country. It has not taken a General Fund appropriation for network operations since FY2004, running instead on what its users pay it.