AS160

AS160 is a low-numbered, legacy Autonomous System Number registered under ARIN to The University of Chicago, a private non-profit research university in Chicago, Illinois (registrant Org ID UNIVER-174-Z, 1155 E. 60th Street). It is a classic academic/research (R&E) eyeball network: a dual-homed campus AS that originates only its own address space and carries no observed downstream customer ASNs, so it behaves as a stub rather than a transit provider. Routing views agree closely on its footprint — six IPv4 prefixes totalling roughly 115,200 addresses (anchored by the legacy 128.135.0.0/16 and 205.208.0.0/17 blocks) plus two IPv6 /48s — and all eight originations carry valid RPKI ROAs, giving it a clean routing posture. Connectivity is the textbook R&E mix: one or more research backbones (Internet2, ESnet, the Chicago-metro MREN) alongside commercial transit from Cogent (AS174) and Zayo (AS6461), with an open PeeringDB policy and 10–20 Gbps of mostly-inbound traffic. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026; passive ipinfo flags (BitTorrent DHT, VPN endpoints) are ordinary artifacts of a large multi-tenant campus, and a bgp.he.net "bogon" annotation tracks the very old 192.5.85.0/24 Class C allocation rather than any hostile routing. The ARIN autnum top-level registration event dates the allocation to 1988-02-25; the 2005-07-28 timestamps on the current org/POC objects are later contact-record registrations, not the ASN allocation.

Operator

The University of Chicago (ARIN registrant OrgId UNIVER-174-Z, 1155 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, US) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP (https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/160), https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/160

AS name / handle

U-CHICAGO-AS (RADB aut-num UCHICAGO-1; IRR as-set AS-UCHICAGO) [Confirmed] — https://bgp.he.net/AS160, https://whois.ipip.net/AS160

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Allocated

1988-02-25 — ARIN autnum top-level registration event (the 2005-07-28 timestamps are POC/org contact-record registrations, not the ASN allocation); NOT an IEEE date (IEEE publishes no ASN registration dates) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/160

Org status

active; private non-profit research university (founded 1890); ARIN RIR status ok [Confirmed for active/non-profit] — https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/160

Website

https://www.uchicago.edu [Confirmed] — https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/160

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-16 (Spamhaus ASN-DROP, AbuseIPDB, NANOG archives all negative); passive ipinfo BitTorrent/VPN flags are campus artifacts; bgp.he.net bogon flag tracks legacy 192.5.85.0/24, not hostile routing

Abuse / NOC contacts

Network Security Center security@uchicago.edu +1-773-702-2378; NOC noc@uchicago.edu +1-773-702-7626

Network & routing

Network type

educational/research (R&E), stub/eyeball — no downstream customer ASNs observed [Confirmed] — https://bgp.tools/as/160

Size

6 IPv4 prefixes (~115,200 addrs; 128.135.0.0/16, 205.208.0.0/17, 192.170.192.0/19, 192.170.224.0/19, 192.5.85.0/24, 198.177.153.0/24) + 2 IPv6 /48s (2605:9a00::/48, 2605:9a00:10::/48) [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net / bgp.tools (2026-06-16)

Routing/peering

~9 BGP sessions observed (4–7 unique peer ASNs by source); upstreams Cogent AS174, Internet2 AS11164/AS11537, Zayo AS6461; R&E peers ESnet AS293, MREN AS22335; avg AS path length 4.273 hops [Confirmed] — https://bgp.he.net/AS160, https://bgp.tools/as/160

RPKI

all 8 announced prefixes (6 IPv4 + 2 IPv6) are ROA-signed and RPKI-valid; 0 invalid; IRR entries also present [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net / bgp.tools

Peering policy

open; multiple locations preferred; no ratio, no contract; route servers not used; protocols Unicast IPv4, Multicast, IPv6 [Confirmed] — https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/160

Notable usage

campus + research network; connects to Internet2 and ESnet; runs a Science DMZ (NSF #1246019) with 100 GbE; Research Computing Center uplinks [Confirmed for Internet2/ESnet/Science DMZ] — https://rcc.uchicago.edu/resources/networking

AS rank / customer cone

Unknown — no global rank ordinal or downstream customer ASNs surfaced at bgp.he.net or bgp.tools (consistent with a stub) [Unknown] — bgp.tools (no data returned)

IX presence

Unknown — no explicit IX membership records returned; R&E peers (MREN, ESnet) hint at regional exchange participation but no IX named [Unknown] — bgp.he.net / bgp.tools (no data returned)

Interconnection facilities

Level(3) Chicago (Kingsbury) and Northwestern University co-location, Chicago, US [Confirmed] — https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/160

Traffic

10–20 Gbps, mostly inbound (day/night rhythm typical of campus networks) [Confirmed] — https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/160

Analyst note

textbook dual-homed academic AS (one R&E upstream + two commercial); clean RPKI; the only data caveats are an unresolved registration-date discrepancy (2005 RDAP vs 1988 aggregator) and unsurfaced AS-rank/IX/cone.