AS297

AS297 is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN to the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It is one of the oldest ASNs on the Internet: the ARIN RDAP autnum top-level registration event dates to 1989-06-09, predating ARIN's own 1997 founding (the number was carried over from the earlier InterNIC-era registry). The ASN is operated by NASA's Communications Service Office (CSO) and underpins the NASA Information Services Network (NISN), which carries enterprise, science, and mission-operations traffic across NASA centers — Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, AL), Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX), Greenbelt (MD), and others. Unlike the dormant legacy ASNs sometimes seen in this number range, AS297 is actively routed: RIPEstat shows roughly 28 IPv4 prefixes and 1 IPv6 prefix announced and visible to the full RIS peer set as of late June 2026, with sample blocks including 198.116.0.0/14, 129.163.0.0/16, and 2001:4d0::/32. CAIDA AS Rank places it at #2415 with a customer cone of 11 ASNs / 258 prefixes / ~2.6M addresses — larger than its own ~664K originated addresses, indicating it provides transit to other NASA-affiliated ASNs. PeeringDB classifies it as Educational/Research with a Selective policy, peering at Equinix Ashburn, Equinix San Jose, and Pacific Wave (each 10G) at 5–10 Gbps balanced traffic. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026 — not on Spamhaus, CleanTalk, or community ASN block lists; the only historical artifact is a 1999 NANOG note about a possibly misconfigured prefix advertisement, with no documented enforcement outcome. NASA appears in the security record as a target of attacks, not a source of outbound abuse.

Operator

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); ARIN org NASA-Z; operated by NASA's Communications Service Office (CSO) / NASA Information Services Network (NISN) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/297, peeringdb.com/asn/297

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/297, RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder

Allocated

1989-06-09 (ARIN RDAP autnum top-level registration event — a first-party RIR fact, NOT an IEEE date); record last changed 2024-12-16 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum top-level events (corroborated by A2 + A3)

Org status

U.S. federal government agency; NASA established 1958-10-01 [Confirmed] — nasa.gov/about, ARIN RDAP

Contacts

NOC handle NISN-ARIN (noc@nisn.nasa.gov, +1-256-961-4000; ARIN marks unvalidated since 2016-11-01); technical DDI Operations (dns@nasa.gov, IPAMO-ARIN) and Ralph F. Bischof Jr. (RFBJ-ARIN); administrative Ivan Munoz (MUNOZ169-ARIN); abuse NASA Abuse (abuse@nasa.gov, NASAA-ARIN)

[Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/297, RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder

Website

https://cso.nasa.gov (Communications Service Office; redirects to authenticated NASA SharePoint — URL confirmed real but internal-only as of 2026-06-27) [Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/asn/297, cso.nasa.gov

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-27 — not on Spamhaus SBL/ASN-DROP (gated, no public listing), CleanTalk (404), or community ASN block lists; only historical artifact is a 1999 NANOG note of a possibly misconfigured prefix (203.252.128.0/18), no enforcement documented; NASA appears as a cyber-attack target (GAO-10-4, NASA OIG IG-19-022), not an abuse source [Confirmed for nulls/dated; Likely for full-feed coverage] — check.spamhaus.org, cleantalk.org/blacklists/asn/297, seclists.org/nanog/1999/Sep/73

Network & routing

Network type

Educational/Research per PeeringDB; U.S. federal government network (some aggregators classify it as Government) [Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/asn/297, ipinfo.io/AS297

Size

actively routed — ~28 IPv4 prefixes + 1 IPv6 prefix announced (~664K IPv4 addresses originated); CAIDA customer cone = 11 ASNs / 258 prefixes / ~2.6M addresses [Confirmed] — RIPEstat announced-prefixes, CAIDA AS Rank

Routing/peering

full RIS visibility (323/323 v4, 321/321 v6); CAIDA AS rank 2415, total degree 15 (8 peers, 6 customers, 1 upstream), clique member; first seen routed 2000-08-18, last seen 2026-06-26; sample prefixes 198.116.0.0/14, 129.163.0.0/16, 161.40.0.0/16, 2001:4d0::/32

[Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / announced-prefixes, CAIDA AS Rank

Peering policy

Selective — no multiple-locations / ratio / contract requirement; peers at Equinix Ashburn (10G), Equinix San Jose (10G), Pacific Wave (10G); does not use route servers; protocols Unicast IPv4/Multicast/IPv6; balanced ratio, 5–10 Gbps [Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/asn/297

RPKI

posture not fully assessable at ASN level — no RPKI-invalid prefixes identified and several prefixes carry valid ROAs, but a per-prefix validation pass was not completed [Likely] — bgp.tools/as/297; RIPEstat routing-status (per-prefix validation needs a specific prefix)

Notable usage

AS297 carries NASA's enterprise/research/mission traffic; NISN underpins connectivity across NASA centers; CSO also provides network security monitoring and mission-routed data services [Confirmed] — ipinfo.io/AS297, peeringdb.com/asn/297, cso.nasa.gov

Analyst note

Actively routed legacy ASN (1989 registration, pre-ARIN) for NASA's NISN. CAIDA cone exceeds direct origination → AS297 provides transit to NASA-affiliated ASNs. RIPEstat overview "announced: false" was a momentary snapshot artifact; announced-prefixes clearly shows active prefixes through 2026-06-26.