AS179

AS179 is a legacy autonomous system registered with ARIN to the Regents of the University of Michigan (commonly the University of Michigan) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. With an ARIN registration event of 28 April 1988 it is one of the oldest ASNs in the registry, dating to the same early-Internet era in which the university — a founding institution behind Merit Network — helped build U.S. academic networking. The key triage point is that AS179 is currently dormant: as of June 2026 it announces no IPv4 or IPv6 prefixes and is not present in the global routing table, a status confirmed independently by Hurricane Electric (bgp.he.net) and bgp.tools. The university's live internet-facing routing runs under other ASNs, with AS36375 commonly cited as its active campus AS; AS179 sits alongside sibling legacy allocations such as AS177 and AS178 that follow the same pattern. Because the AS originates nothing, all routing metrics — prefix counts, upstreams, peers, IX memberships, customer cone, AS rank, and RPKI posture — are source-backed nulls rather than fabricated values. No notable public abuse signal was found in any searched threat feed (Spamhaus DROP/ASN-DROP, AbuseIPDB, Silent Push, C0nw0nk ASN-BlackList, NANOG archives) as of June 2026. The university operates a documented internet-wide research-scanning program from 141.213.13.192/28, which can generate benign false-positive probe reports but is not malicious activity. The August 2023 University of Michigan data breach concerned the institution as a victim, not abuse originating from this ASN. The active campus backbone (UMnet), run by U-M Information and Technology Services, uses Juniper carrier-grade routers and 100 Gbps Internet2 connectivity, but that infrastructure is not routed under AS179.

Operator

Regents of the University of Michigan (commonly University of Michigan); ARIN OrgId UNIVER-118-Z, Ann Arbor, MI [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/179

Allocated

ARIN ASN registration event 1988-04-28 (registry RDAP event; NOT attributed to IEEE and not an original third-party "date registered" artifact); RDAP last changed 2020-01-14 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/179

Org status

active public research university (founded 1817, Ann Arbor, MI); network managed by U-M Information and Technology Services (ITS); ASN allocated/active in the registry but dormant in BGP [Confirmed] — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Michigan, https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/179

Contacts

admin Internet Numbers Administration (internet-numbers@umich.edu, +1-734-647-4200, handle INA18-ARIN); technical UMnet Administration (umnet-admin-team@umich.edu, handle UA11-ORG-ARIN); abuse IT Abuse Investigation (report-abuse@umich.edu, +1-734-764-4357, handle IAI8-ARIN) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-18 across Spamhaus DROP/ASN-DROP, AbuseIPDB, Silent Push, C0nw0nk ASN-BlackList, and NANOG archives; documented benign research scanning from 141.213.13.192/28 (U-M EECS) can cause false-positive probe reports

Network & routing

Network type

educational / research university network (legacy allocation; the active campus backbone UMnet routes under other ASNs) [Confirmed] — https://its.umich.edu/enterprise/wifi-networks/core-network

Size / routing status

NOT in the global routing table — 0 IPv4 prefixes, 0 IPv6 prefixes, 0 peers observed as of 2026-06 [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net / bgp.tools

Routing/peering

no upstreams, peers, or IX memberships observed; no published peering policy; no PeeringDB record (peeringdb.com/asn/179 returns 404) [Confirmed] — https://bgp.he.net/AS179, https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/179

RPKI posture

N/A — no originated prefixes means no ROAs to evaluate (sourced-null, not a coverage claim) [Confirmed] — bgp.tools

Notable usage

legacy/dormant ASN (handle UMICH-AS-3); one of the earliest university ASNs in ARIN; the university's live routing uses newer ASNs (commonly AS36375) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/179, https://bgp.tools/as/179

Related ASNs

AS177 and AS178 (sibling legacy U-M allocations), AS36375 (commonly cited active U-M campus ASN) [Likely for AS36375 as primary active] — https://bgp.tools/as/177

Analyst note

encountered as a dormant early-Internet university ASN; registry resolves to the University of Michigan; all routing nulls are source-backed by two live looking glasses. Clean legacy ASN.