AS8038 6CONNECT

6CONNECT — the network of 6connect, Inc., the network-automation software

company behind ProVision (IPAM, DNS, DHCP and peering automation). Founded in

2009 around the problem of IPv6 migration, it runs this AS for its own

infrastructure and its hosted product.

What it's used for

• 6connect's corporate and product infrastructure: the SaaS side of ProVision, company mail and edge gear.
• IPv6 work. The company's whole reason for existing is address management, and the AS reflects it.

Notable

• Tiny in IPv4 (67.221.240.0/20, about 2,000 addresses across eight /24s) but it shows 80+ observed BGP neighbours. That ratio is unusual and it is not a transit business: 6connect is deeply embedded in the peering community and present on a lot of exchange fabrics for a company of its size.
• Reverse DNS is all first-party operations naming — core1.fmt.6connect.com (Fremont), mailgate-ape1.6connect.com, www-cloud.6connect.com — plus a firewall interface named for Ljubljana. No subscriber pools, no customer hosting.
• More IPv6 prefixes than IPv4 ones, including 2607:fae0::/32 and a RIPE 2a00:8642::/32. A few names in the space (tcp0.com) belong to associates rather than 6connect itself, so treat individual hosts on their own merits.

Interesting

• 6connect claims to have been the first vendor to integrate its product directly with a Regional Internet Registry. An AS with almost no addresses and a great many peers is what a company that manages addressing for other people looks like.