AS261

AS261 is a legacy autonomous system number registered in the RIPE NCC database to FR-CINES-MONTPELLIER, the Montpellier site of CINES (Centre informatique national de l'enseignement supérieur), France's national high-performance-computing centre. The ASN sits inside the French national research-and-education network (NREN): it is held under the parent organisation GIP RENATER (ORG-RA8-RIPE), maintained by RENATER-MNT, with abuse handled by certsvp@renater.fr. CINES is a French public administrative establishment (EPA, SIREN 193415940) under the Ministry of Higher Education and is best known operationally as the host of the Adastra supercomputer (HPE Cray EX, installed January 2023, multi-petaflop, top-tier globally) and a national long-term digital-archiving service. The key triage point for AS261 is that it is effectively dormant in interdomain routing: every routing source consulted (RIPEstat routing-status, CAIDA AS Rank, bgp.he.net, Cloudflare Radar) agrees it currently announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes and is seen by zero RIS peers (0/327 v4, 0/324 v6). Its CAIDA AS rank of 79,459 sits near the bottom of the global ranking, its customer cone is a singleton (itself, 0 prefixes, 0 addresses), and CAIDA observes 0 upstreams, 0 peers, and 0 customers. Historical RIS data shows the ASN announcing 192.54.151.0/24 from 2001-02-18 and last seen announcing 195.83.185.0/24 on 2017-08-28, with bgp.he.net placing the withdrawal around 2017-07-21. RPKI posture cannot be assessed because there are no active originations and therefore no ROAs to validate. CINES's general internet transit, when active, ran via the RENATER national backbone (AS2200), which provides upstream connectivity and handles peering at major French IXes under an open policy. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026 — consistent with a clean, dormant ASN held by a respected R&E operator that runs its own FIRST-member incident-response team (CERT-Renater).

Operator

CINES (Centre informatique national de l'enseignement supérieur), Montpellier; held under GIP RENATER, France's NREN [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP (FR-CINES-MONTPELLIER, ORG-RA8-RIPE), cines.fr, renater.fr

Country / RIR

FR, RIPE NCC (ARIN redirects AS261 queries to RIPE; AS 1–1876 block "Assigned by ARIN" per IANA 16-bit registry) [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP, RIPEstat as-overview/abuse-contact-finder (authoritative_rir: ripe)

Allocated

2002-09-19 (RIPE RDAP autnum top-level registration event; NOT an IEEE date — IEEE publishes no ASN registration dates); last changed 2019-06-24 [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP autnum top-level events (re-fetched: registration 2002-09-19T15:18:06Z, last changed 2019-06-24T12:27:51Z)

Org status

French public administrative establishment (EPA, SIREN 193415940) under the Ministry of Higher Education; created by decree 1999 (institutional origins 1981); ~60 staff (2023). Parent NREN GIP RENATER founded 1993

[Confirmed] — annuaire-entreprises.data.gouv.fr, fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/CINES, renater.fr/en/about

Contacts

abuse certsvp@renater.fr; org ORG-RA8-RIPE (GIP RENATER, 23–25 Rue Daviel, 75013 Paris); maintainer RENATER-MNT [Confirmed for abuse/RIR via RIPEstat; Likely for postal address via RDAP mirrors] — RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder, RIPE RDAP

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-20 — not on Spamhaus DROP, AbuseIPDB, CleanTalk, FireHOL, or ipapi.is feeds; bgp.he.net carries a historical "announces bogons" flag reflecting past, not current, behaviour (0 prefixes now). RENATER runs CERT-Renater, a FIRST member [Likely — open web search only, no live direct-query checks] — bgp.he.net/AS261, spamhaus.org, first.org/members/teams/cert-renater

Network & routing

Network type

national/campus-scale research and education (R&E) network — AS261 is the Montpellier HPC/data-centre site identifier on the RENATER backbone, not a general-purpose ISP; legacy/dormant in routing [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP, bgp.he.net/AS261

Size

dormant — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 IPv4 addresses and 0 IPv6 prefixes currently announced; customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / CAIDA AS Rank / bgp.he.net (2026-06)

Routing/peering

NOT announced — 0 RIS peers seeing it (0/327 v4, 0/324 v6); CAIDA degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0). Historical RIS: first seen 192.54.151.0/24 on 2001-02-18, last seen 195.83.185.0/24 on 2017-08-28; bgp.he.net places withdrawal ~2017-07-21 [Confirmed]. AS261's transit, when active, ran via AS2200 (RENATER), which peers at French IXes (Equinix Paris, France-IX Paris/AURA, nine, Lillix) under an open policy

[Likely for AS2200 policy] — RIPEstat routing-status, bgp.he.net, peeringdb.com/asn/2200

RPKI

not assessable — AS261 announces no prefixes, so there are no ROAs to validate (RIPEstat rpki-validation skipped, no prefix to supply) [Unknown]

Notable usage

CINES is France's national HPC centre — host of the Adastra supercomputer (HPE Cray EX, installed Jan 2023, multi-petaflop) and previously Occigen (2015–2022); also runs national long-term digital archiving (PAC/FACILE). AS261 (FR-CINES-MONTPELLIER) was the network identifier for this Montpellier site on the RENATER backbone

[Confirmed] — cines.fr, fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/CINES, phidias-hpc.eu

Related ASNs

AS2200 (GIP RENATER — the national backbone providing AS261's transit) [Confirmed for AS2200 as upstream] — bgp.he.net/AS261, peeringdb.com/asn/2200

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant legacy ASN registered to a French national HPC/R&E operator; WHOIS resolves to CINES under RENATER, but the ASN has been withdrawn from BGP since mid-2017. Clean, inactive ASN. (Note: A2 cited the legal holder as CINES; A3/A4/A5 frame the holder as RENATER administratively — both are consistent: CINES is the holding institution, RENATER the parent NREN/administrator.)