AS256

AS256 is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN to the Navy Network Information Center (NNIC), a U.S. Navy network operations entity that manages Navy IP address space and ASNs as part of the broader Department of Defense network. Its ASN name, DNIC-AS-00256, follows the Defense Network Information Center convention shared across roughly ninety NNIC-held ASNs. The registry record places NNIC at 2465 Guadalcanal Road, Building 1265, Virginia Beach, VA 23459, with administrative, abuse, and technical contact routed through DISA-Columbus (disa.columbus.ns.mbx.arin-registrations@mail.mil) — a clear sign of DISA oversight of the registration. AS256 is one of the earliest ASNs ever allocated: the ARIN autnum record carries a top-level registration date of 1988-12-09, with the record last changed 2011-07-05. The triage point for AS256 is that it is dormant in BGP today. Every routing source consulted (RIPEstat, CAIDA AS Rank) agrees it announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes, has zero visible peers, zero upstreams, and zero customers. RIPEstat last observed it in the global routing table on 2002-01-20 (prefix 198.91.73.0/24), having first seen it 2001-07-17 (130.109.0.0/16); as of the query date, 0 of 327 RIS v4 peers and 0 of 324 RIS v6 peers see any route from it. CAIDA ranks it 79,459 with a singleton customer cone. RPKI posture is not assessable because there are no active originations and therefore no ROAs. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026 — not in Spamhaus ASN-DROP, the ipapi.is most-abusive list, or NANOG archives — consistent with a clean, dormant government ASN.

Operator

Navy Network Information Center (NNIC) (U.S. Navy / DoD network entity; ARIN handle DNIC-AS-00256, Virginia Beach, VA) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP, ipinfo.io/AS256

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder (authoritative_rir: arin)

Allocated

1988-12-09 (ARIN registry date from the autnum top-level events — a first-party RIR fact, NOT an IEEE date); last changed 2011-07-05 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum top-level events

Org status

U.S. federal government / military entity; NNIC manages Navy IP space and ASNs under DISA oversight (admin contact via DISA-Columbus) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Network_Warfare_Command

Contacts

disa.columbus.ns.mbx.arin-registrations@mail.mil; +1-844-347-2457 ext.2; abuse/admin via DISA-Columbus, 300 North James Road, Whitehall, OH 43213; registrant 2465 Guadalcanal Road, Bldg 1265, Virginia Beach, VA 23459 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-20 — not in Spamhaus ASN-DROP, ipapi.is most-abusive ASNs, or NANOG archives; FraudGuard ASN page returned 404 (Unknown, not clean); dormant ASN under a U.S. government operator [Likely for community blocklists; Unknown for FraudGuard] — spamhaus.org/drop/asndrop.json, ipapi.is/most-abusive-asn.html

Network & routing

Network type

U.S. military / government network; AS256 is legacy/inactive — one of ~90 NNIC-held ASNs covering Navy networks, but AS256 itself announces nothing [Confirmed] — ipinfo.io/AS256, networksdb.io

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 (2026-06)

Routing/peering

NOT announced — 0 RIS peers seeing it (0/327 v4, 0/324 v6); last seen in BGP 2002-01-20 (198.91.73.0/24), first seen 2001-07-17 (130.109.0.0/16); CAIDA degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0); no upstreams or peers visible [Confirmed]. No PeeringDB entry for AS256; no public peering policy found [Unknown]

RPKI

not assessable — AS256 announces no prefixes, so there are no ROAs to validate; RPKI validation skipped (no prefix supplied) [Unknown]

Notable usage

One of the earliest ASNs registered globally (1988-12-09). Part of the DNIC convention of ~90 NNIC-held ASNs covering U.S. Navy installations; AS256 itself carries no active routes as of 2026 — ARIN RDAP, networksdb.io, ipinfo.io/AS256

Related ASNs

NNIC holds ~90 DNIC-convention ASNs (e.g. AS22, AS84, AS219, AS257, AS768, AS2749, AS5058) [Likely per third-party DB] — bgpview.io/asn/256, ipinfo.io/AS256

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant legacy ASN registered to a U.S. Navy entity (NNIC) under DISA oversight; WHOIS resolves cleanly but live routing has been absent since 2002. Clean, inactive government ASN. Allocation date 1988-12-09 taken exclusively from the autnum top-level registration event; nested org/contact events (NNICN-1 2006-09-21, REGIS10-ARIN 2009-06-24) are entity-level decoys and were ignored.