AS163

AS163 is a legacy two-digit-era allocation registered under ARIN to IBM (International Business Machines Corporation), with the handle IBM-RESEARCH-AS. The registry contact address — 3039 Cornwallis Road, Research Triangle Park, NC — ties the number to IBM's Research Triangle Park campus, and the abuse contact is ipreg@us.ibm.com. The defining triage fact is that AS163 is effectively dormant: it originates zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes, and routing observatories agree. RIPEstat reports 0 of 328 RIS peers seeing any v4 route and 0 of 322 seeing any v6 route; bgp.tools states it is "not currently in the global routing table"; CAIDA marks it unseen, ranks it #79,459, and records an AS degree of 0 across customer, peer, and provider relationships with a customer cone of just the AS itself. There is no PeeringDB record (404) and no observable transit, peers, or IXP presence. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026; the only IBM-branded networks with documented abuse histories are the operationally separate AS36351 (IBM Cloud / SoftLayer) and AS706, not this research ASN. The ARIN RegDate of 1988-03-17 is the registry-shown date (last changed 2023-11-03); it is not attributed to IEEE and predates routing-table history. Note: one source angle initially framed AS163 as a China Telecom target — that is a misidentification; every source confirms AS163 is IBM's legacy research ASN, and China Telecom is carried under AS4134 / AS4809 / AS4816.

Operator

IBM — International Business Machines Corporation (ARIN OrgId IBM-1-Z; handle IBM-RESEARCH-AS) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder (authoritative RIR = ARIN)

Allocated

ARIN ASN RegDate 1988-03-17 (registry-shown date, NOT attributed to IEEE; one of the earliest ASNs); ASN last changed 2023-11-03 [Confirmed for the shown dates] — ARIN RDAP

Org status

active company, dormant ASN. IBM is a publicly traded US corporation (NYSE: IBM; LEI VGRQXHF3J8VDLUA7XE92; HQ Armonk, NY; founded 1911 as CTR, renamed IBM 1924) [Confirmed] — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM, lei-lookup.com

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-16 — no Spamhaus SBL/ASN-DROP, CleanTalk, or AbuseIPDB listing for AS163; no NANOG abuse threads. A non-announcing AS presents no abuse surface. Bounded by no direct query of closed feeds (Team Cymru, Recorded Future)

Network & routing

Network type

corporate research network, legacy/dormant — no active prefixes, peers, or upstreams; IBM runs separate active ASNs (e.g. AS19604, AS36351) for commercial/cloud infrastructure [Confirmed] — ipinfo.io, bgp.he.net

Size

0 IPv4 prefixes, 0 IPv6 prefixes, ~0 addresses announced; not in the global routing table [Confirmed] — RIPEstat announced-prefixes / routing-status, bgp.he.net, bgp.tools (2026-06)

Routing/peering

not announced — 0/328 RIS peers (v4), 0/322 (v6); 0 observed neighbours, 0 upstreams, 0 peers, 0 downstreams [Confirmed]; no PeeringDB record (404), peering policy Unknown — RIPEstat routing-status, bgp.he.net, bgp.tools

CAIDA

AS Rank #79,459, seen=false, clique=false, AS degree 0 (customer/peer/provider all 0); customer cone = 1 ASN / 0 prefixes / 0 addresses; country ISO US (lon/lat 0,0 is a null placeholder, not a real coordinate) [Confirmed] — asrank.caida.org / api.caida.org

RPKI

not assessable — AS announces no prefixes; RIPEstat rpki-validation skipped (no prefix), bgp.he.net reports 0 valid / 0 invalid originated [Confirmed]

Notable usage

one of the earliest ASNs (RegDate 1988-03-17), registered to IBM Research Triangle Park. IP2Location associates large IBM administrative blocks (9.x, 129.x, 137.x ranges) with the org, but those prefixes are NOT actively routed under AS163; the ASN is effectively dormant — ip2location.com, ipinfo.io [Likely]

Related ASNs

AS36351 (IBM Cloud / SoftLayer) and AS706 (TEST-AUSTIN-IBM-AS) are operationally separate IBM networks and carry their own (distinct) routing/abuse histories; AS163 shares none of it [Likely] — cleantalk.org, ipinfo.io

Analyst note

A legacy IBM research ASN, registered and reserved but not routed. Encountered as a registry/historical artifact, not in live traceroutes. WHOIS resolves cleanly to IBM. Abuse contact ipreg@us.ibm.com. Do not confuse with China Telecom (AS4134/AS4809/AS4816).