AS6736 IRANET-IPM Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences IPM

IRANET-IPM is the network of the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM) in Tehran, a national research institute for mathematics, physics and computer science. IPM operates IRANET, historically the backbone of Iran's academic internet connectivity.

What it's used for

• Connectivity for IPM itself and for Iranian universities and research institutes reached through IRANET. The AS anchors the well-known academic allocation 194.225.0.0/16 alongside newer blocks.
• The aut-num object publishes BGP communities for downstream customers, including a blackhole community (6736:9999), so the AS acts as a transit provider for the networks it serves rather than only as a stub.

Notable

• This is a research-and-education network, not a commercial ISP. Its address space is institutional: universities, laboratories and the institute's own facilities.
• IPM is the organisation through which academic internet access in Iran was first arranged, which is why an ordinary research institute ends up holding one of the country's most recognisable IPv4 blocks.

Interesting

• Very few institutions are simultaneously a physics-and-mathematics research body and their country's academic network operator. IPM is one of them, and the IRANET half of the handle is the part that explains its routing footprint.