AS8517 ULAKNET

ULAKNET is Turkey's national research and education network, operated by

ULAKBİM, the Turkish Academic Network and Information Centre, an institute of

the national research council TÜBİTAK. It is the country's NREN: the network that

connects Turkish universities to each other, to GÉANT and to the wider internet.

What it's used for

• Backbone and access connectivity for public and private universities, research institutes, and other academic bodies across Turkey.
• Shared academic services run by ULAKBİM — mirrors, national e-resource licensing, identity federation and the country's academic addressing.

Notable

• The AS carries a large inventory for an NREN: roughly 300,000 addresses, including a full 194.27.0.0/16 plus 161.9.128.0/17, 95.183.128.0/17 and a set of 193.255.x /24s.
• rDNS resolves straight onto edu.tr campuses — hosts under gazi.edu.tr, kocaeli.edu.tr and their peers. Much of the space is delegated to member universities that run their own naming, so many addresses answer nothing at all.
• Large parts of the block are university-side end-user space rather than provider infrastructure, but the users are students and staff on campus, not consumer broadband subscribers.

Interesting

• Because ULAKNET numbers so many institutions out of one AS, the individual campus is invisible in BGP — the university boundary shows up only in DNS.