AS7173 Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica

INAOE is Mexico's national institute for astrophysics, optics and electronics,

based at Tonantzintla in the state of Puebla. It is a public research centre that

also runs graduate programmes.

What it's used for

• Campus and research networking for the institute: laboratories, observatories, computing facilities and its graduate school.
• Announces a handful of /24s across 192.100.172.0/24, 148.207.x and 200.23.5.0/24, plus an IPv6 /48 — a small footprint for a specialised institute.

Notable

• Reverse DNS resolves under inaoep.mx (for example tonali.inaoep.mx, named for Tonantzintla), confirming this is the institute's own address space and not a shared national-network allocation.
• INAOE is best known internationally for its role in the Large Millimeter Telescope on Sierra Negra, an instrument it operates jointly with the University of Massachusetts — the kind of project that gives a research institute a genuine need for its own network.

Interesting

• The 192.100.172.0/24 block is old, sequential-era space from before Mexico's address allocations moved under LACNIC, which is part of why a small research institute holds a four-digit AS number.