Autonomous system
AS668 DNIC-AS-00668
Business ARIN Educational/Research
Summary
US Department of Defense (DREN)
government research
AS668 (DNIC-AS-00668) is a US Department of Defense network, operated as the Defense Research and Engineering Network (DREN) — the DoD's high-performance backbone for its research, test, and engineering communities.
What it's used for
- Connecting DoD research and engineering sites to geographically distributed supercomputing resources over a secure, high-bandwidth, low-latency network.
Notable
- An IP here belongs to a US government / DoD operational network, not a commercial ISP or hosting provider. Most of the space is an internal "DoD-only" network; a smaller portion reaches the public internet through dedicated security gateways.
- Registered to the DoD Network Information Center (DNIC), which holds many US federal-government ASNs.
Interesting
- DREN links roughly 200 sites; its fourth generation (DREN 4) was completed in 2023.
This description is AI-generated, best-effort context — not authoritative, and provided without any guarantee of accuracy. Source, and how to suggest an edit.
Interconnection
Peering at a glance
Internet exchanges
Recorded at 8 exchanges in 1 country, largest first.
| Exchange | Location | Their address |
|---|---|---|
| Equinix Internet Exchange Ashburn | Ashburn, United States | 206.126.237.42 |
| Seattle Internet Exchange | Seattle, United States | 206.81.81.57 |
| Equinix Internet Exchange Chicago | Chicago, United States | 208.115.136.233 |
| Equinix Internet Exchange San Jose (Bay Area) | San Jose, United States | 206.223.117.200 |
| Digital Realty Atlanta Internet Exchange | Atlanta, United States | 206.126.110.60 |
| Equinix Internet Exchange Los Angeles | Los Angeles, United States | 206.223.123.18 |
| Equinix Los Angeles IBX | Los Angeles, United States | 206.223.123.18 |
| Equinix IBX Secaucus | Secaucus, United States | 206.223.117.200 |
Transit providers
9 upstream, 27 downstream and 53 adjacent networks observed; most-used upstreams first.
Exchange presence is recorded rather than inferred: the directory collected by Packet Clearing House (https://www.pch.net/ixp/data) on 2026-10-11, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Transit is inferred from observed BGP paths, never declared by either party.
Address space
Summary
IPv4 172 prefixes · 2.49M addresses IPv6 126 prefixes
| Country | Name | Prefixes |
|---|---|---|
| US | United States of America | 298 |
Registry
Allocation record
- Registry
- ARIN
- Handle
AS668- Registry name
- DNIC-AS-00668
- Registrant
- United States Department of Defense (DoD)
- Abuse contact
- disa.columbus.ns.mbx.hostmaster-dod-nic@mail.mil
- Registered
- 1990-04-24
- Last changed
- 2025-09-12
- Allocation
- assigned
Declared
PeeringDB profile
- Name
- DREN
- Also known as
- HPCMP
- Network type
- Educational/Research
- Scope
- North America
- Traffic ratio
- Mostly Inbound
- Peering policy
- Open
- IRR as-set
AS-DREN- Present at
- 10 exchanges
- Facilities
- 10 facilities
- Website
- https://www.hpc.mil/solution-areas/networking
PeeringDB records are maintained by the network operator and are not independently verified. Treat them as a statement of intent rather than of fact. For the observed and recorded view, see peering, which lists the exchanges Packet Clearing House has a port on file for.
Routing security
RPKI and IRR
- RPKI
- 0% valid · 0 valid, 193 with no ROA
- ROAs
- 0 authorising AS668
- ASPA
- no ASPA record
- IRR
- 98% registered · 190 of 193 announcements
- Route objects
- 250 naming AS668
Reputation
Classification and threat
Business Corporate network, or multi-tenant SASE egress carrying staff browsing.
Spamhaus DROP
Not on ASN-DROP The network as a whole is not listed.
No DROP prefixes None of its announced space is on the DROP prefix list.
Spamhaus DROP ("Don't Route Or Peer") lists space and networks run by, or hijacked for, spam and cybercrime operations: 431 networks and 1,768 prefixes, as published 2026-10-12. A short, high-confidence list, so a match is worth taking seriously, and absence from it says little on its own.
FBI IC3
No IC3 indicators Nothing from the FBI IC3 feed.
IC3 threat data is alpha. Absence of an indicator is not evidence of good behaviour, only of absence from this one feed.
Elsewhere