AS234

AS234 is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN with the handle NETHER-RESEARCH, held by Nether.Net — the personal research and infrastructure network of Jared Mauch, a long-standing figure in the North American network-operations community, based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The key triage point for AS234 is that it is dormant: every routing source consulted (RIPEstat, CAIDA AS Rank, bgp.he.net, bgp.tools) agrees it announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes today, has zero visible BGP peers, and has been absent from the global routing table since 2022-08-07. It was historically active — RIPE RIS first observed it on 2000-08-18 (204.212.44.0/22) and last on 2022-08-07 (192.68.28.0/24, a prefix bgp.he.net flags as a bogon). Its CAIDA AS rank of 79,459 sits near the bottom of the global ranking, with a singleton customer cone (the ASN itself, 0 prefixes, 0 addresses) and all degree values at zero. RPKI posture cannot be assessed because there are no active originations and therefore no ROAs. AS234 belongs to the AS-NETHER IRR as-set alongside AS267 (NETHER-NET) — Mauch's active rural fiber-to-the-home ISP, Washtenaw Fiber Properties LLC / WashFTTH, which serves Washtenaw County, Michigan, and peers openly at the Detroit Internet Exchange. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026 — AS234 does not appear in Spamhaus ASN-DROP, and CleanTalk/AbuseIPDB/ipapi returned no usable hits (the ASN controls 0 active IPs) — consistent with a clean, dormant ASN held by a respected operator.

Operator

Nether.Net (informal name for Jared Mauch's personal network; ARIN org handle NETHER-2, Ann Arbor, MI 48103) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/234, whois.arin.net/rest/org/NETHER-2

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/234; RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder (authoritative_rir: arin)

Allocated

1996-07-01 (ARIN autnum top-level registration event, NOT an IEEE date — IEEE publishes no ASN registration dates); last changed 2022-04-29 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/234 top-level events (org-record 2000-05-17 and contact 1995-01-23 dates are nested decoys, not used)

Org status

individual/private operator; Nether.Net is Jared Mauch's personal network. The live commercial ISP entity is Washtenaw Fiber Properties LLC, operating AS267 [Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/org/23285, peeringdb.com/net/20268

Contacts

technical/admin/abuse POC Jared Mauch (ARIN handle JM568-ARIN, originally registered 1995-01-23); the POC's personal mailbox is withheld here — consult the ARIN RDAP entity record directly. Ann Arbor, MI 48103 [Confirmed] — RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder, ARIN RDAP entity JM568-ARIN

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-20 — not in Spamhaus ASN-DROP; CleanTalk (HTTP 403), AbuseIPDB (HTTP 404 — 0 IPs), ipapi.is (HTTP 403) returned no usable data; no NANOG-archive incidents. Only on-record anomaly is the historical bogon announcement (192.68.28.0/24), a routing-hygiene issue, not abuse — spamhaus.org/drop/asndrop.json, bgp.he.net/AS234

Network & routing

Network type

personal/research network; AS234 (NETHER-RESEARCH) is legacy/dormant — operator's active ISP runs under AS267 [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net/AS234, peeringdb.com/asn/234, peeringdb.com/net/20268

Size

dormant — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 IPv4 addresses and 0 IPv6 prefixes; customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses — RIPEstat routing-status / CAIDA AS Rank (2026-06)

Routing/peering (AS234)

NOT announced — 0 RIS peers seeing it (0/327 v4, 0/324 v6); CAIDA degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0); historically active 2000-08-18 → 2022-08-07; last-seen prefix 192.68.28.0/24 flagged as a bogon by bgp.he.net [Confirmed]. PeeringDB AS234 lists all peering fields as "Not Disclosed" [Confirmed]

RPKI

not assessable — AS234 announces no prefixes, so there are no ROAs to validate (RIPEstat rpki-validation requires an announced prefix) [Confirmed]

Notable usage

historically a research/personal ASN. Nether.net hosts public network-engineering mailing lists (cisco-nsp, juniper-nsp, foundry-nsp) and infrastructure at puck.nether.net (also git.nether.net, mastodon.nether.net). Operator built a separate rural FTTH ISP (Washtenaw Fiber Properties LLC / WashFTTH, AS267) serving Washtenaw County, MI — puck.nether.net/~jared/me.html, washftth.com, peeringdb.com/net/20268

Related ASNs

AS267 (NETHER-NET / Washtenaw Fiber Properties — operator's active network; open peering at DET-iX). Both are members of the AS-NETHER IRR as-set (which also lists AS112, the public reverse-DNS black-hole ASN) [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net/irr/as-set/AS-NETHER, peeringdb.com/net/20268

Naming conflict

db-ip.com / ipgeolocation.io label AS234 as "BLACKROSE-1 / Blackrose Society"; this is a stale third-party database artifact. ARIN RDAP (first-party authoritative) confirms NETHER-RESEARCH / Nether.Net, last updated 2022-04-29

[Confirmed] — rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/234, db-ip.com/as234-blackrose-society

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant legacy ASN held by a respected operator. WHOIS resolves to Nether.Net / Jared Mauch, but no live routing exists under AS234; the operator's active ISP routing is under AS267. Operator's current employer is reported variably across third-party bios (Akamai vs NTT America) and is not load-bearing here; left unstated. Clean, inactive ASN.