AS8291 RSNET-AS RSNET

RSNET-AS is RSNet, the Russian state data network, registered to the

Federal Guard Service of the Russian Federation (FSO). RSNet is the segment

of the internet operated for federal government bodies, run by the FSO's special

communications and information service.

What it's used for

• Connectivity and hosting for Russian federal state organs. Reverse DNS inside the announced prefixes lands squarely on government hosts: gw.council.gov.ru and mail.senat.gov.ru (the Federation Council), and www.fagci.ru, the domain of the government-communications agency whose functions were folded into the FSO.
• Housing the .gov.ru presence of federal agencies and the state's official online services.

Notable

• Government address space, not a commercial network. There is no subscriber or customer space here, nothing is sold as access or hosting, and the addresses should be read as belonging to Russian federal institutions.
• The inventory is small and tightly held: the 194.226.80.0/21 and 194.226.116.0/22 ranges plus a 95.173.128.0/21 block, announced as a set of overlapping covering prefixes and /24s.
• Reverse DNS is published only sparsely, which is unsurprising for a network operated by a federal protective and communications service.

Interesting

• The low AS number and the 194.226.0.0/16-era addressing put this among the earlier Russian registrations, from the period when the state's networking was being organised out of the agencies that preceded today's FSO service.