AS6621 HNS-DIRECPC

The satellite broadband network of Hughes Network Systems, LLC, registered under

the handle HNS-DIRECPC. The handle names DirecPC, the early Hughes consumer

satellite internet product whose descendants ship today as HughesNet.

What it's used for

• Addressing for satellite internet subscribers. Reverse DNS across its space resolves to host-….hnremote.net, the naming used for HughesNet remote terminals, which is about as clear a subscriber signal as rDNS gets.
• The AS announces several hundred IPv4 prefixes plus a large IPv6 footprint, covering hundreds of thousands of addresses.

Notable

• This is residential space with an unusual physical layer. Users are typically in rural and remote areas where terrestrial broadband is unavailable, so addresses here often geolocate poorly: the address is tied to a satellite gateway, not to the customer's house.
• Latency on this network is dominated by the geostationary hop, and traffic is commonly shaped by the accelerator and proxy equipment in the Hughes gateways.

Interesting

• The DIRECPC in the handle is a fossil from the mid-1990s. The ASN registration dates from that era, and the product name changed repeatedly, but the handle never did.