AS176

AS176 is one of the lowest-numbered Autonomous System Numbers in the ARIN registry, carrying the name BCN-AS and registered to Information Systems and Networks Corporation, a US federal IT-services contractor that today operates as ISN Corporation out of Bethesda, Maryland. The allocation dates to 1988-04-21 per ARIN's RDAP record, placing it among the earliest ASNs and reflecting the early participation of US government contractors in the Internet. The original ARIN point of contact pointed to the US Army Information Systems Command (USAISC) at the Pentagon, which suggests early Department of Defense network use, though the registered holder is the private contractor rather than the Army itself. The key triage point is that despite its low number and "active" RDAP status, AS176 has never appeared in the global routing table: all three primary sources — RIPEstat (0 of 327 IPv4 RIS peers and 0 of 323 IPv6 RIS peers see it), Hurricane Electric (bgp.he.net), and bgp.tools — independently confirm zero announced prefixes (v4 and v6), zero peers, and zero upstreams. CAIDA AS-Rank places it at rank 79459 with a degree of zero in every direction. ARIN notes the point of contact has been unresponsive since 2010-06-20, so contact data is unvalidated. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026; the dormant routing posture leaves effectively no active network surface to generate abuse. The "BCN" name here is unrelated to BCN Telecom, a separate company with a different ASN.

Operator

Information Systems and Networks Corporation (operating today as ISN Corporation), ARIN OrgId ISNC [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP (https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/176)

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Allocated

ARIN ASN RegDate 1988-04-21; ASN last changed 1991-01-10 (registry refresh, not necessarily original assignment) [Confirmed for the shown dates] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/176 / https://whois.arin.net/rest/asn/AS176

Org status

ISN Corporation is an active for-profit US federal IT-services contractor (Subchapter S), HQ 10411 Motor City Drive, Suite 700, Bethesda, MD 20817; UEI WN6NG8L4CM46, CAGE 0BTB1. The AS176 allocation itself is dormant/inactive [Confirmed] — highergov.com awardee record / isncorp.com

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-18; no Spamhaus ASN-DROP listing, no NANOG/threat-feed mentions identified; dormant routing means effectively no active surface — searches of Spamhaus ASN-DROP, AbuseIPDB, NANOG archives, bgp.tools [Likely]

Network & routing

Network type

currently inactive/dormant — 0 active prefixes, 0 BGP peers, 0 announcements; originally a US federal IT-services contractor network, not a transit ISP or content network [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net / ipinfo.io

Size

none in the global table — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 addresses, 0 IPv6 prefixes; CAIDA cone = 1 ASN / 0 prefixes / 0 addresses — bgp.he.net / bgp.tools / api.caida.org/as-rank/v1/asns/176 (2026-06)

Routing/peering

not announced; 0 upstreams, 0 peers across RIPEstat, bgp.he.net, bgp.tools; never seen by RIS collectors (data back to 2000-08-01) [Confirmed]; no PeeringDB record (API 404) [Confirmed] — stat.ripe.net/data/routing-status/data.json?resource=176 / peeringdb.com/asn/176

RPKI

Unknown — no announced prefixes to evaluate ROAs against; RIPEstat rpki-validation skipped (requires a prefix); bgp.he.net reports all RPKI metrics zero [Confirmed that it is unevaluable] — stat.ripe.net/data/rpki-validation/data.json?resource=176

Notable usage

registered April 1988, among the earliest ASNs; original ARIN technical contact was the US Army Information Systems Command (USAISC) at the Pentagon, suggesting early DoD-adjacent use; the holder is the private contractor, and the ASN has had no active routing since at least 2010

[Likely] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/176 / bgp.he.net

Related ASNs

none observed (0 neighbours/peers/upstreams) [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net / bgp.tools

ARIN contact validation

ARIN has received no response from the POC since 2010-06-20; contact data is unvalidated [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/176

Analyst note

Encountered as a low-numbered legacy/administrative allocation that was apparently never operationally routed on the public Internet; WHOIS resolves to a private federal contractor (ISN Corporation), and the Pentagon/USAISC tie is historical contact heritage, not a current-operator fact.