Autonomous system
AS8895 ISU Internet Services Unit ISU
Education DROP-listed space RIPE
Summary
Internet Services Unit (ISU), King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology
education research legacy
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.saandsga.kku.edu.saat King Khalid University in Abha.
Notable
- The inventory is large for an academic operator because ISU holds the legacy
212.138.0.0/16alongside dozens of212.26.xand212.138.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
educationon 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.
This description is AI-generated, best-effort context — not authoritative, and provided without any guarantee of accuracy. Source, and how to suggest an edit.
Interconnection
Peering at a glance
Internet exchanges
Recorded at 1 exchange in 1 country, largest first.
| Exchange | Location | Their address |
|---|---|---|
| SAIX Saudi Arabia Riyadh | Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | 45.94.12.7 |
Transit providers
10 upstream, 3 downstream and 18 adjacent networks observed; most-used upstreams first.
Exchange presence is recorded rather than inferred: the directory collected by Packet Clearing House (https://www.pch.net/ixp/data) on 2026-10-16, licensed CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Transit is inferred from observed BGP paths, never declared by either party.
Address space
Summary
IPv4 116 prefixes · 99.58K addresses IPv6 28 prefixes
| Country | Name | Prefixes |
|---|---|---|
| SA | Saudi Arabia | 144 |
Registry
Allocation record
- Registry
- RIPE
- Handle
AS8895- Registry name
- ISU
- Registrant
- ISU-NOC
- Abuse contact
- abuse@isu.net.sa
- Registered
- 2001-11-06
- Last changed
- 2026-07-14
- Allocation
- allocated
Routing security
RPKI and IRR
- RPKI
- 98% valid · 110 valid, 2 with no ROA
- ROAs
- 144 authorising AS8895
- ASPA
- no ASPA record
- IRR
- 100% registered · 112 of 112 announcements
- Route objects
- 196 naming AS8895
Reputation
Classification and threat
Education University, school or national research and education network.
Spamhaus DROP
Not on ASN-DROP The network as a whole is not listed.
1 DROP match Announced space overlapping the DROP prefix list.
| Announced | DROP entry | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 91.229.52.0/22 | 91.229.52.0/22 | SBL504770 |
Spamhaus DROP ("Don't Route Or Peer") lists space and networks run by, or hijacked for, spam and cybercrime operations: 442 networks and 1,783 prefixes, as published 2026-10-17. A short, high-confidence list, so a match is worth taking seriously, and absence from it says little on its own.
FBI IC3
No IC3 indicators Nothing from the FBI IC3 feed.
IC3 threat data is alpha. Absence of an indicator is not evidence of good behaviour, only of absence from this one feed.
Elsewhere