AS1273

AS1273 is a large, active autonomous system registered in the RIPE NCC database under the legacy AS-name "CW" and held today by Vodafone Group PLC. The "CW" handle is a historical artifact: the ASN originated with Cable & Wireless, the 19th-century British telecoms firm, and its global wholesale/enterprise unit, Cable and Wireless Worldwide, was acquired by Vodafone in April 2012 for roughly £1.04 billion, folding the AS1273 backbone into what Vodafone now markets as the Vodafone Global Network. This is a Tier-1-class international transit and enterprise carrier: PeeringDB reports a balanced traffic level in the 50–100 Tbps range, a Selective peering policy across roughly two dozen public exchanges (AMS-IX, LINX, several Equinix fabrics), and recommended max-prefix limits around 120,000 IPv4 / 15,000 IPv6. Routing sources agree the ASN is heavily interconnected — on the order of 240 observed neighbours, full RIS visibility for both IPv4 and IPv6, and around 191 IPv4 prefixes plus 2 IPv6 prefixes announced live, covering roughly two million IPv4 addresses. RPKI posture is partial: most originated prefixes carry valid ROAs, but a small number of invalid originations were observed. The most substantive security-context item is the April 2021 AS55410 (Vodafone Idea) BGP route leak, in which AS1273 acted as a propagating upstream — not the misconfiguring origin — and was criticised for lacking max-prefix guards on that session. No ASN-wide blocklisting was found as of June 2026. The authoritative RIPE RDAP autnum top-level registration event is 2002-09-23.

Operator

Vodafone Group PLC (RIPE AS-name "CW"; registrant CW-EUROPE-GSOC; admin/tech GSOC-RIPE = Vodafone IP GSOC) [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP autnum/1273, peeringdb.com/net/261

Country / RIR

United Kingdom (GB), RIPE NCC [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP autnum/1273 (Source: RIPE), RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder (authoritative_rir: ripe)

Allocated

2002-09-23 (RIPE RDAP autnum top-level registration event — a first-party RIR fact, not an IEEE date); last changed 2026-03-09 [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP autnum/1273 events[]

Org status

Vodafone Group PLC, publicly traded multinational telecom, HQ The Connection, Newbury, RG14 2FN, United Kingdom; AS1273 backbone entered Vodafone via the April 2012 Cable and Wireless Worldwide acquisition (~£1.04B / ~$1.7B) [Confirmed] — techcrunch.com (2012), RIPE RDAP autnum/1273

Contacts

ipabuse@vodafone.co.uk (abuse); peeringsupport@vodafone.com / peeringrequest@vodafone.com; emergency network control +44 1344 602224 (24x7) [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP autnum/1273 remarks/vcard

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no ASN-wide blocklisting found as of 2026-06-25 — no Spamhaus ASN-DROP/SBL/XBL bloc entry, no threat-feed callout; CleanTalk shows ~2.79% spam on one monitored subnet (62.213.128.0/23), consistent with background noise for a multi-million-address carrier

Network & routing

Network type

NSP / global wholesale backbone and transit carrier (IP transit, enterprise connectivity, peering); both transit customer and transit provider for 150+ downstream networks [Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/net/261, bgp.tools/as/1273

Size

~191 IPv4 prefixes and 2 IPv6 prefixes announced; ~2.0–2.1M IPv4 addresses; IPv6 prefixes 2001:5000::/21 and 2a01:818:1a80::/43 [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / announced-prefixes, bgp.he.net/AS1273

Routing/peering

~241 observed neighbours; full RIS visibility (326/326 v4, 323/323 v6); ~241 IPv4 / ~165 IPv6 BGP peers; ~21 IXPs; routing first seen ~2000-08-18 [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status, bgp.he.net/AS1273. Selective peering policy, contract + multi-location required, 100GE PNIs preferred, no route servers, RTBH community 1273:666

[Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/net/261, onestep.net/communities/as1273

RPKI

partial — majority of originated prefixes have valid ROAs (~106 valid: 105 IPv4, 1 IPv6); 3 invalid originations (2 IPv4, 1 IPv6) indicate some ROA-prefix mismatches; bgp.tools shows "Validating RPKI ROV" [Likely] — bgp.he.net/AS1273, bgp.tools/as/1273

Notable usage

primary global IP backbone for Vodafone Group and its enterprise/wholesale customers; IP transit, MPLS, international private circuits, enterprise WAN; pan-European backbone and subsea systems inherited from Cable and Wireless Worldwide

[Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/net/261, bgp.tools/as/1273, techcrunch.com (2012 Vodafone/C&W Worldwide acquisition)

BGP incidents (DATED)

(a) May 2012 — prefix 194.63.9.0/24 appeared in a NANOG "Top 20 Unstable Prefixes" report (routine churn, not a hijack); (b) April 16, 2021 — AS1273 was a propagating upstream in the AS55410 (Vodafone Idea) route leak that misdirected 30,000+ prefixes for ~1 hour; AS1273 was a victim/propagator, criticised for lacking max-prefix limits, not the misconfiguring origin

[Confirmed] — seclists.org/nanog/2012/May/253, manrs.org (2021 AS55410 analysis), blog.apnic.net (2021), catchpoint.com

Related fields

MANRS membership Unknown — not confirmed in public sources as of 2026-06-25 [Unknown]; AS rank / customer cone Unknown — not returned by RIPEstat or bgp.he.net in the fetched data [Unknown]

Analyst note

Encountered as a large, active Tier-1-class European backbone whose RIPE AS-name "CW" reflects Cable & Wireless origin; now Vodafone Global Network. Some third-party lookup sites show a 1993 date that appears to be a database artifact — the authoritative RIPE RDAP top-level registration event is 2002-09-23.