AS165

AS165 is an early ARIN-registered Autonomous System Number held by the United States Department of Defense, with the registrant listed in ARIN as "United States Department of Defense (DoD)" under the legacy DoD Network Information Center (DNIC) naming scheme, and the administrative and technical contacts handled by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) office in Columbus, Ohio. The triage point for this ASN is that it is allocated and shows ARIN status "active," yet it is operationally dormant in the global routing system: as of June 2026 it originates zero IPv4 prefixes and zero IPv6 prefixes, is seen by 0 of 328 IPv4 RIS peers and 0 of 322 IPv6 RIS peers, and has no observable BGP neighbours, peers, or upstreams across RIPEstat, CAIDA, bgp.he.net, and bgp.tools. Its CAIDA rank of 79459 and customer cone of just one ASN (itself) reflect this absence of routing activity rather than a measure of reach. The ARIN autnum top-level registration event dates the allocation to 1988-03-25 (a registry date, not an IEEE assignment date). DISA, a DoD combat-support agency reporting to the DoD CIO, operates the Defense Information System Network (DISN); interconnection to DoD networks is governed by the DISN Connection Process Guide rather than any commercial open-peering policy, and there is no PeeringDB entry. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026: AS165 is absent from the Spamhaus ASN-DROP list, and its inactive routing status means it presents effectively no live-traffic abuse surface.

Operator

United States Department of Defense (DoD), administered by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), DoD Network Information Center (DNIC) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP / RIPEstat as-overview

Allocated

1988-03-25 — ARIN autnum top-level registration event (NOT an IEEE date; IEEE publishes no ASN registration dates); autnum last changed 2025-09-12 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/165

Org status

active ARIN registrant, U.S. federal government combat-support agency (DISA), reporting to the DoD CIO; not a commercial entity, ISP, or private organization [Confirmed] — usa.gov / federalregister.gov

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-16; absent from the Spamhaus ASN-DROP list (JSON feed dated 2026-04-12, 430 entries, AS165 not present); no AS165-specific NANOG threads found; inactive routing status means no live-traffic abuse surface. Several third-party reputation lookups (AbuseIPDB ASN page, Scamalytics, CleanTalk) returned HTTP 403/404 and could not be confirmed

Network & routing

Network type

U.S. federal government / defense — DISA operates the Defense Information System Network (DISN); ASN allocated but operationally dormant (not currently in the global BGP table) [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net / bgp.tools

Size

none currently routed — 0 IPv4 prefixes, 0 IPv6 prefixes, 0 routed addresses; CAIDA customer cone = 1 ASN / 0 prefixes / 0 addresses [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / CAIDA / bgp.he.net (2026-06)

Routing/peering

announced = false; 0 of 328 IPv4 RIS peers and 0 of 322 IPv6 RIS peers see it; CAIDA asnDegree total/customer/peer/provider all 0; observed_neighbours = 0; no upstreams or peers observed [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / CAIDA

RPKI

Unknown / not assessable — with zero announced prefixes there are no ROAs to validate; RIPEstat rpki-validation requires a prefix and was skipped; bgp.he.net reports all RPKI metrics zero, consistent with no active announcements [Confirmed that it is not assessable] — RIPEstat / bgp.he.net

IX presence

none recorded; not present in PeeringDB; CAIDA ixp = null [Confirmed] — CAIDA / bgp.tools

Notable usage

an early ARIN allocation (record dated 1988) assigned to the DoD via the DoD Network Information Center; DISA manages the DISN, DoD's global enterprise network for classified and unclassified voice, video, and data; the ASN is currently dormant with no prefixes announced

[Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP / DISN Connection Process Guide (dl.dod.cyber.mil)

Related ASNs

DoD has historically held many ASNs via the DNIC (e.g., AS56, AS306–371, AS27032–27159); exact relationship to AS165 not asserted here beyond shared DoD/DNIC stewardship [Likely for shared stewardship] — CAIDA AS Rank

Contact

tech/abuse disa.columbus.ns.mbx.hostmaster-dod-nic@mail.mil; registrations disa.columbus.ns.mbx.arin-registrations@mail.mil; phone +1-844-347-2457 ext. 2; address DISA-Columbus, 300 North James Road, Whitehall, OH 43213, US [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant, registry-active DoD/DISA ASN; ARIN status is "active" but it announces nothing in the global routing table. Clean, no public abuse signal.