asn.dev

Autonomous system

AS8094 PUKNET

Education APNIC

IPv4 addresses 196K 21 prefixes
IPv6 prefixes 1 counted as prefixes, not addresses
Countries 1 mostly ZA
Exchanges 0 recorded by PCH
Upstreams 1 0 downstream
Flagged prefixes 0 none

Summary

North-West University

South Africa · AI-generated

education university research legacy

PUKNET is the Autonomous System of North-West University, a large public university in South Africa with campuses at Potchefstroom, Mahikeng and Vanderbijlpark. The handle preserves the institution's older name, the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education ("PUK").

What it's used for

  • Campus networking for teaching, research and administration across the university's sites, plus student residence and library access.
  • The rDNS confirms the holder and the rename in the same zone file: hosts inside 143.160.32.0/22 resolve to both puk.ac.za and nwu.ac.za names, with server-style labels rather than subscriber pools.

Notable

  • This is an institutional network, not an access or hosting one. Addresses in it belong to university-managed hosts and campus clients.
  • It is unusually large for a single university: roughly 196k IPv4 addresses across about 50 prefixes, mixing an ARIN-era 143.160.0.0/16 legacy block with AFRINIC space in 196.252.0.0/17 and 196.253.0.0/16. The mix of registries is normal for an African institution that was numbered before AFRINIC existed.

Interesting

  • South African universities connect through TENET/SANReN, the national research and education network, which is why a campus AS of this size shows very few BGP neighbours: almost all of its transit arrives over the NREN.

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

Full topology · Graph

Internet exchanges

No exchange port on file. Many exchanges publish no participant list, so this is not proof of absence.

Transit providers

1 upstream, 0 downstream and 2 adjacent networks observed; most-used upstreams first.

ASNetworkPaths seen
AS2018Tertiary Education and Research Network of South Africa3,132

Exchange presence is recorded rather than inferred: the directory collected by Packet Clearing House (https://www.pch.net/ixp/data) on 2026-10-18, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Transit is inferred from observed BGP paths, never declared by either party.

Address space

Summary

Shape and geography

IPv4 21 prefixes · 196K addresses IPv6 1 prefixes

CountryNamePrefixes
ZASouth Africa22

Registry

Allocation record

APNIC · via Atlas (registry + RDAP)
Registry
APNIC
Handle
AS8094
Registry name
ORG-PU1-AFRINIC
Registrant
North West University
Registered
2005-02-21
Last changed
2019-01-12
Allocation
allocated

Routing security

RPKI and IRR

Full detail
RPKI
2% valid · 1 valid, 50 with no ROA
ROAs
1 authorising AS8094
ASPA
no ASPA record
IRR
92% registered · 47 of 51 announcements 2 other origin
Route objects
76 naming AS8094

Reputation

Classification and threat

Education University, school or national research and education network.

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: 442 networks and 1,784 prefixes, as published 2026-10-19. 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

Cross-check