AS235

AS235 is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN to Merit Network, Inc., the nonprofit research-and-education (R&E) network founded in 1966 and governed by Michigan's public universities. It is one of the earliest ASNs ever allocated — the ARIN autnum carries a top-level registration date of 1988-09-12, predating widespread BGP deployment — and was last changed 2012-04-02. The decisive triage point is that AS235 is effectively dormant today: bgp.he.net and bgp.tools both report zero IPv4 prefixes and zero IPv6 prefixes announced under AS235, with no visible upstreams, peers, or customer cone. Merit's live operational routing runs under AS237 (MERIT-AS-14), which carries roughly 300–500 Gbps over about 4,000 miles of owned fiber, runs a Selective peering policy (peering@merit.edu), maintains the IRR as-set RADB::AS-MICHNET, and peers at exchanges including Any2Chicago, DET-iX Detroit, Equinix Chicago, and the Grand Rapids Internet Exchange. RPKI posture cannot be assessed for AS235 because it originates no prefixes and therefore holds no ROAs. Merit's historical weight is substantial: it operated the NSFNET backbone (1987–1995) under a ~$39M NSF award, founded and administered NANOG (1994–2011), and operates RADb and the ORION Network Telescope — a large U.S. darknet sensor monitoring roughly 475,000 unused addresses. No notable public abuse signal was found as of 2026-06-20 — not in Spamhaus ASN-DROP, AbuseIPDB, Cloudflare Radar, or NANOG archives — consistent with a clean, dormant ASN held by a respected R&E operator.

Operator

Merit Network, Inc. (nonprofit R&E network; ARIN handle MERIT-AS-12, org MICH-Z, Ann Arbor, MI) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP, merit.edu/about

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/235

Allocated

1988-09-12 (ARIN registry date from the autnum top-level registration event, NOT an IEEE date — IEEE publishes no ASN registration dates); last changed 2012-04-02 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum top-level events

Org status

active independent nonprofit corporation (Merit Network), governed by Michigan's public universities; founded 1966; recommended in 2025 for an ~$11M NTIA Digital Equity Act award [Confirmed] — merit.edu/about/history, prnewswire.com (NTIA award)

Contacts

abuse@merit.edu (+1-734-527-5740); ipreg@merit.edu (admin); operations@merit.edu (tech); HQ 880 Technology Drive, Suite B, Ann Arbor, MI 48108 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/235

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-20 — not in Spamhaus ASN-DROP, AbuseIPDB, Cloudflare Radar (routing/as235), or NANOG archives; dormant ASN under a respected R&E operator that itself runs defensive security research [Likely; absence-of-evidence from web-indexed search, not a live DNSBL lookup] — spamhaus.org, radar.cloudflare.com/routing/as235

Network & routing

Network type

regional research and education (R&E) network; AS235 is legacy/inactive (Merit's active network runs under AS237) [Confirmed] — merit.edu/about, peeringdb.com/asn/237

Size

dormant — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 IPv4 addresses and 0 IPv6 prefixes; no customer cone observable [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net/AS235, bgp.tools/as/235 (2026-06)

Routing/peering

NOT announced — zero active prefix originations, no upstreams or peers visible in any routing source [Confirmed]. Merit's active AS237 runs a Selective peering policy (peering@merit.edu), as-set RADB::AS-MICHNET, IXPs Any2Chicago / DET-iX / Equinix Chicago / GRIX

[Likely for AS237 policy attribution] — peeringdb.com/asn/237

RPKI

not assessable — AS235 announces no prefixes, so there are no ROAs to validate [Confirmed] — bgp.tools/as/235

Notable usage

Merit operated the NSFNET backbone (1987–1995), founded and administered NANOG (1994–2011), operates RADb (IRR), and runs the ORION Network Telescope (~475,000 monitored addresses). AS235 (MERIT-AS-12) is an early/legacy Merit ASN; active infrastructure now runs under AS237 — merit.edu/about/history, merit.edu/research/projects/orion-network-telescope, peeringdb.com/asn/237

Related ASNs

AS237 (Merit's active operational network) [Confirmed]; Merit holds additional legacy ASNs (e.g. AS181, the NSFNET-era MERIT-AS-1) [Confirmed for AS237/AS181]

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant legacy ASN registered to a historically significant R&E operator; WHOIS resolves to Merit Network, but live routing is under AS237, not AS235. Clean, inactive ASN.