AS9885 NKN-INTERNET-GW

AS9885 (NKN-INTERNET-GW) is the internet gateway AS of India's National Knowledge Network (NKN), the national research and education network that connects universities, research institutes and government scientific bodies across the country. It is listed in PeeringDB as an educational/research network.

What it's used for

The routing evidence describes a gateway, not an address-holding network, and the two look very different. RIS sees this AS originating just one IPv4 prefix — 27.0.252.0/24, 256 addresses — and no IPv6, yet it is observed with 21 BGP neighbours. Twenty-one neighbours behind a single /24 is a ratio you never see on an eyeball or enterprise network; it is the signature of an AS whose job is to connect things rather than to number them. NKN's member institutions sit behind the network's other ASNs and address space; AS9885 exists at the edge, where NKN meets commercial transit providers, content networks and internet exchanges. The single /24 is infrastructure — the kind of block a gateway uses for its own peering interfaces and border equipment.

Notable

• NKN is a national-scale R&E backbone in the same family as GÉANT in Europe or Internet2 in the United States: publicly funded, carrying research and academic traffic, and interconnecting with peers rather than selling access.
• Because this AS is a gateway rather than a service network, an address seen inside AS9885 tells you almost nothing about an end user. The interesting NKN traffic transits it and lands elsewhere.
• Address-count-based sizing of this ASN is misleading for exactly that reason: 256 originated addresses substantially understates the network's importance.