AS8520 DUNKEL

DUNKEL is the network of Dunkel GmbH, a managed hosting, cloud and IT

security provider based in Hattersheim near Frankfurt, close to the DE-CIX

exchange. The AS is now registered to SITS Deutschland GmbH — Dunkel joined

the Swiss IT Security Group, and the handle outlived the standalone company name.

What it's used for

• Managed cloud, hosting, storage and disaster-recovery services for German business customers, run out of Rhine-Main data centres.
• Managed email security: part of the space carries mail relays under sec-provider.de, the front end of a secure-mail service.
• About 10,000 addresses across four prefixes (88.215.192.0/19 is the bulk) plus an IPv6 /33.

Notable

• Every prefix is registered directly to the holder (DUNKEL-NET-* netnames), so the scattered-looking inventory is a real operator's own space, not brokered address blocks.
• Reverse DNS is sparse — most of the range answers nothing, and the names that do exist are first-party service hosts. That fits a managed-hosting estate where customer VMs sit behind the provider's own naming, and rules out any residential or eyeball use.

Interesting

• The proximity to DE-CIX is the whole pitch: a mid-sized German hoster selling data-residency and ISO-27001 compliance to customers who want their data to stay in Germany.