AS8895 ISU Internet Services Unit ISU

ISU is the Internet Services Unit of KACST, the King Abdulaziz City for

Science and Technology in Riyadh. It is the LIR and network operator for Saudi

Arabia's academic and research sector.

What it's used for

• Connectivity, hosting and cloud services for Saudi universities, research centres, laboratories and allied government bodies — today branded as the Maeen research and innovation network.
• Sampled rDNS inside its prefixes resolves to campus infrastructure: ns1.kku.edu.sa and sga.kku.edu.sa at King Khalid University in Abha.

Notable

• The inventory is large for an academic operator because ISU holds the legacy 212.138.0.0/16 alongside dozens of 212.26.x and 212.138.x /23s and /24s sub-assigned to individual institutions. An address here is institutional, not commercial hosting, and the specific university varies block by block.
• Classified education on the strength of who the space serves, not on KACST's status as a state research city.

Interesting

• ISU was created by Council of Ministers resolution in 1996 and switched on public Internet service for the Kingdom in December 1998, making this AS the descendant of Saudi Arabia's original national gateway. Its role has since narrowed to the academic and research community, with commercial service handled by the telcos.