AS8094 PUKNET

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.