AS8875 SINMA-ASN

SINMA-ASN belongs to sinma GmbH, a Berlin-based full-service internet provider for business customers, operating data-centre footprints in Berlin and Frankfurt am Main. The AS carries hosting, colocation and business-connectivity space, not consumer broadband.

What it's used for

Server hosting, server housing/colocation, VPN and fixed-line business connectivity. The announced inventory is built around 83.223.64.0/19 plus 45.145.8.0/22 and 185.219.152.0/22, and the sampled reverse DNS splits cleanly into two families:

• sinma's own infrastructure — sinma-fra.sinma.de, melmac.ffm.mind-the.sinma.de, network-NNN.sinma.de. The mind-the label is a fossil of mind internetservices, the predecessor operation the founders ran from 1991 before incorporating sinma in 2001.
• a large block of hostsharing.net hosts — roNNNNNN.hostsharing.net, vmNNNN.hostsharing.net, cdsNN.hostsharing.net — the German Hostsharing eG hosting cooperative riding sinma's network.

Notable

• Server, router and VM naming throughout. There are no dsl-, pppoe-, dyn- or pool. markers, so this is hosting space rather than an eyeball network, despite sinma also selling DSL with static IPs.
• Peering is at DE-CIX and BCIX, consistent with a Berlin/Frankfurt regional provider rather than a national carrier.
• A tenant's reverse DNS dominating a provider's space is normal for small hosts. The prefixes still belong to sinma.
• The arrangement is documented in the reverse zone in plain language: one sampled address resolves to the literal string reserviert-fuer-hs — German for "reserved for HS", i.e. set aside for Hostsharing. Reverse DNS occasionally states an operator's intentions outright.