AS189

AS189 is a low-numbered, early-registered Autonomous System Number held under ARIN by Level 3 Parent, LLC — the surviving legal entity for the Level 3 Communications network assets now operated by Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink, which completed its acquisition of Level 3 on November 1, 2017). The ARIN RDAP record names the ASN LUMEN-LEGACY-L3-PARTITION and carries an autnum top-level registration event of 2002-06-05 with a last-changed event of 2021-12-02; the org handle is LPL-141 and status is active. The defining triage point for AS189 is that it is effectively dormant: every routing source consulted (RIPEstat, CAIDA AS Rank, bgp.he.net, bgp.tools, IPinfo) agrees it announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes, has no visible BGP peers, no upstreams, and no customer cone beyond itself. RIPEstat shows 0 of 327 IPv4 and 0 of 323 IPv6 RIS peers seeing it; CAIDA reports an AS rank near the bottom of the global table (~79,459) with provider, peer, and customer degree all zero. Routing history indicates AS189 was active between roughly 2000-08-18 (first seen announcing 144.8.0.0/16) and 2008-05-10 (last seen announcing 205.226.0.0/19), and has been withdrawn from the global routing table for well over a decade. The name "LEGACY-L3-PARTITION" and the RDAP contacts (admin/tech ipadmin@lumen.com, abuse abuse@aup.lumen.com, an RPKI-ROA group registered 2024-06-17) indicate the ASN is administratively held — including for ROA infrastructure — rather than operationally routing traffic. Lumen/Level 3's active production network runs under AS3356. No notable public abuse signal was found for AS189 as of June 2026: it is absent from the UCEPROTECT Level 3 worst-ASN list and from CleanTalk/Spamhaus listings, with only a single historical bogon-route flag (192.239.86.0/24) in Hurricane Electric data and no active announcement of that prefix.

Operator

Level 3 Parent, LLC (ARIN org handle LPL-141; surviving entity for Level 3 Communications assets under Lumen Technologies, formerly CenturyLink) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP (https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/189), https://ir.lumen.com/news/news-details/2017/CenturyLink-completes-acquisition-of-Level-3/default.aspx

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP (https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/189)

Allocated

2002-06-05 (ARIN autnum top-level registration event, a first-party RIR registry date, NOT an IEEE date — IEEE publishes no ASN registration dates); last changed 2021-12-02 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum top-level events (https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/189)

Org status

active ARIN registrant; Level 3 Parent, LLC is the registered holder; parent Lumen Technologies is a publicly traded Tier-1 carrier (NYSE: LUMN) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP (https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/189), https://www.lumen.com/en-us/about.html

Contacts

abuse abuse@level3.com / abuse@aup.lumen.com (LAC56-ARIN); admin/tech ipadmin@lumen.com / ipadmin@centurylink.com (APL7-ARIN, ADMIN POC LVLT); RPKI rpki-roa@lumen.com; phone +1-877-453-8353; looking glass https://lookingglass.centurylink.com/; HQ 100 CenturyLink Drive, Monroe, LA 71203, US

[Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP (https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/189)

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-19 — absent from UCEPROTECT Level 3 worst-ASN top-10 [Confirmed]; no CleanTalk/Spamhaus listing surfaced (those endpoints returned dynamic/blocked responses, no listing found via secondary sources) [Likely]; one historical bogon-route flag for 192.239.86.0/24 in Hurricane Electric data, with no active announcement of that prefix; ~15-year routing dormancy gives a negligible current threat surface — https://www.uceprotect.net/en/index.php?m=3&s=5, https://bgp.he.net/AS189

Network & routing

Network type

legacy/inactive partition ASN within Lumen's Tier-1 global carrier network inherited from Level 3; not currently routing (Lumen's active network runs under AS3356) [Confirmed] — https://bgp.tools/as/189, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_3_Communications

Size

dormant — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 IPv4 addresses and 0 IPv6 prefixes; customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / CAIDA AS Rank / bgp.tools (2026-06) (https://stat.ripe.net/data/routing-status/data.json?resource=AS189)

Routing/peering

NOT announced — 0 RIS peers seeing it (0/327 v4, 0/323 v6); CAIDA degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0); no upstreams or peers visible in any source [Confirmed]. Lumen's active AS3356 runs a Selective settlement-free peering policy (peering@lumen.com; policy last revised 2021-09-09) [Likely for AS3356 policy] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/routing-status/data.json?resource=AS189, https://www.lumen.com/en-us/about/legal/peering-policy.html

AS rank / customer cone

CAIDA AS rank ~79,459 (near bottom, reflecting inactive routing); customer cone = singleton (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses; not a clique member; no IXP recorded [Confirmed] — CAIDA AS Rank (https://api.asrank.caida.org/v2/graphql)

RPKI

not assessable for AS189 — it announces no prefixes, so there are no ROAs to validate; however an RPKI-ROA contact group is registered (handle RPKIR-ARIN, rpki-roa@lumen.com, registered 2024-06-17), indicating ROA-creation infrastructure for Lumen/Level 3 space

[Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP (https://rdap.arin.net/registry/entity/RPKIR-ARIN)

Routing history

first seen announcing 144.8.0.0/16 on 2000-08-18; last seen announcing 205.226.0.0/19 on 2008-05-10; withdrawn from active BGP since [Confirmed via RIPEstat; ~2011 dormancy per bgp.he.net] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/routing-status/data.json?resource=AS189, https://bgp.he.net/AS189

Notable usage

legacy administrative partition ASN from the Level 3 era, retained post-acquisition by Lumen and held as a member of the LEVEL3::as-lumen-asns IRR AS-SET; no active prefix announcements (0 IPv4, 0 IPv6); primary operational Lumen/Level 3 ASN is AS3356 [Confirmed] — https://bgp.tools/as/189

Related ASNs

AS3356 (Lumen's/Level 3's primary active operational network); AS189 is part of the LEVEL3::as-lumen-asns AS-SET [Confirmed for AS3356; Likely for AS-SET membership per third-party DB] — https://bgp.tools/as/189

Analyst note

Low-numbered legacy ASN whose WHOIS resolves to Level 3 Parent, LLC under Lumen; the RDAP name LUMEN-LEGACY-L3-PARTITION and zero-announcement posture across all five sources indicate an administratively held carve-out (used for RPKI-ROA infrastructure), not an operational network. Note that A1's canonical fetch was truncated mid-object and surfaced only entity-level registration events (e.g. LPL-141 org 2018-02-06); the authoritative allocated_date is the autnum TOP-LEVEL registration event 2002-06-05, re-fetched unbounded and corroborated by RIPEstat-adjacent sources and IPinfo. Live routing is under AS3356, not AS189.