AS156

AS156 is registered under ARIN to Northeastern University, the private nonprofit research university in Boston, Massachusetts, and it carries the ARIN handle NORTHEASTERN-GW-AS. It is a long-established academic autonomous system: the ARIN RDAP registration event is dated 1988-02-01, which makes it one of the older ASNs in the ARIN registry. The network is a classic campus / "eyeball" edge network rather than a transit provider — bgp.tools classifies it as Eyeball and tags it as an academic institution, and it serves the university's multi-campus student, faculty, and research computing population. AS156 originates roughly 14 IPv4 prefixes (on the order of ~131,000 addresses) drawn mainly from the 129.10.0.0/16 and 155.33.0.0/16 ranges, and announces no IPv6 prefixes at the time of research — a notable gap for a major research university. It receives transit from Cogent (AS174) and Lumen/Level 3 (AS3356) and also peers with Harvard University (AS10578), an arrangement typical of Boston-area academic networking. RPKI coverage appears absent or minimal; some prefixes match only unauthenticated IRR sources, and no ROAs were confirmed. PeeringDB lists an open peering policy (record last updated 2026-04-04) with no public IXP presence. No notable public abuse signal was found as of 2026-06-15. One research angle initially mis-assumed AS156 belonged to StarHub Singapore and abstained; that premise is false — StarHub's ASNs are AS4657 / AS138345 — and every other angle independently confirms Northeastern University, so the abstention is not a refutation of the holder.

Operator

Northeastern University (ARIN registrant org handle NORTHEASTERN-7 / "NORTHE-7"; 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, US) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP, ipinfo, bgp.tools, ip2location

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Allocated

ARIN ASN registration event 1988-02-01; ASN record last changed 2000-01-28 (this is the ARIN RDAP registration event, not an original pre-ARIN assignment date) [Confirmed for the shown registration event] — rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/156

Org status

active holder (Northeastern University), private nonprofit research university; abuse/admin/tech POC NETOPS validated (netserv@neu.edu) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP, northeastern.edu/about

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-15; not on Spamhaus ASN-DROP; only isolated per-IP AbuseIPDB reports (background noise for a large campus); no BGP hijack incidents found; university runs an Office of Information Security with documented incident response

Network & routing

Network type

academic / campus "eyeball" edge network; stub AS (no downstream customer cone) [Confirmed] — bgp.tools, bgp.he.net

Size

~14 IPv4 prefixes (~131,000 IPv4 addresses), 0 IPv6 prefixes; mainly 129.10.0.0/16 and 155.33.0.0/16 ranges [Confirmed; canonical RIPEstat snapshot showed a 9-prefix subset (truncated capture), bgp.he.net/bgp.tools both report 14 IPv4] — bgp.he.net/AS156, bgp.tools/as/156

Routing/peering

upstreams AS174 (Cogent) and AS3356 (Lumen/Level 3); also peers AS10578 (Harvard University); ~4 observed IPv4 peers (incl. AS1239 Sprint/Cogent); no IPv6 sessions [Confirmed for upstreams/peers] — bgp.he.net, bgp.tools, ipinfo

Peering policy

Open per PeeringDB (record last updated 2026-04-04); no public IXP/exchange listed; no policy URL published; NOC netserv@neu.edu / +1-617-373-3300 (NETOPS) [Likely — single source PeeringDB] — peeringdb.com/asn/156

RPKI

no confirmed ROAs; some prefixes match only unauthenticated IRR sources; RIPEstat rpki-validation skipped (no prefix supplied); coverage absent or minimal [Likely] — bgp.he.net, bgp.tools, RIPEstat canonical JSON

AS rank / customer cone

Unknown — not reported for AS156 by bgp.he.net or bgp.tools; appears to be a pure stub originating only its own space [Unknown]

Notable usage

campus network for Northeastern University (Boston, MA; founded 1898) supporting students, faculty/staff and research computing across its campuses; participates in AS-SET / IRR registries under LEVEL3 and RADB (specific AS-SET name not publicly disclosed) [Confirmed for campus use; AS-SET name Likely] — its.northeastern.edu, bgp.tools

Related ASNs

AS174 (Cogent, upstream), AS3356 (Lumen/Level 3, upstream), AS10578 (Harvard University, peer) [Confirmed]

AS-path stats

1,374 distinct IPv4 AS paths observed; average AS path length ~4.394 hops [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net/AS156

Analyst note

One angle (community corroboration) mis-assumed a StarHub Singapore identity and abstained; that premise is wrong (StarHub = AS4657/AS138345) and all other angles confirm Northeastern University, so the holder is not in doubt. Clean academic stub ASN.