AS396

AS396 is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN to Air Force Systems Networking, part of the U.S. Department of the Air Force and the broader Department of Defense information-technology enterprise. The ASN does not appear as its own distinct autnum record at ARIN; instead it falls within a single block registration, AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS, spanning AS379 through AS508, held under registrant org handle 7ESG at 501 East Moore Drive, Bldg 884 Rm 1100, Gunter Annex, Maxwell AFB, AL 36114. Administrative, technical, and abuse contact for the block is DISA-Columbus (300 North James Road, Whitehall, OH 43213). The block's top-level ARIN registration event is dated 1989-08-04, a legacy 1980s-era military allocation, with a record last-changed date of 2008-06-06. The triage point for AS396 is that it is effectively dormant: RIPEstat's as-overview reports announced=false, announced-prefixes returns an empty set across the 2000-2026 window, and routing-status shows zero RIS peers seeing it (0/323 v4, 0/321 v6), zero announced prefixes and addresses, and zero observed neighbours. CAIDA AS Rank and customer-cone data could not be retrieved (the source timed out), so no rank is asserted. RPKI posture is not assessable because the ASN originates no prefixes. No notable public abuse signal was found as of 2026-07-02 — nothing surfaced in Spamhaus DROP/ASN-DROP context, NANOG archives, BGP-incident retrospectives, or general threat-intel aggregators — consistent with a dormant, non-transit government allocation with minimal public routing footprint.

Operator

Air Force Systems Networking, U.S. Department of the Air Force (ARIN registrant org handle 7ESG; block name AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/396

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/abuse-contact-finder/data.json?resource=396 (authoritative_rir: arin)

Allocated

1989-08-04 (ARIN RDAP autnum top-level 'registration' event for the AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS block AS379–AS508 that contains AS396; a first-party RIR registry fact, NOT an IEEE date); record last changed 2008-06-06 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/396

Org status

active (per ARIN RDAP status field); long-standing block allocation registered to a U.S. Air Force / DoD organization [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/396

Contacts

abuse/admin/tech via DISA-Columbus — disa.columbus.ns.mbx.arin-registrations@mail.mil, +1-844-347-2457 ext.2 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/396, https://stat.ripe.net/data/abuse-contact-finder/data.json?resource=396

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-07-02 — nothing in Spamhaus DROP/ASN-DROP context, NANOG archives, BGP hijack/route-leak retrospectives, or threat-intel aggregators; consistent with a dormant government ASN with no public routing footprint

Network & routing

Network type

U.S. federal government / military network (Department of the Air Force, part of the DoD enterprise / AFNET ecosystem); not a commercial ISP, content, or transit provider [Likely] — https://www.acc.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/1595271/air-force-network-integration-center/

Size

dormant — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 IPv4 addresses and 0 IPv6 prefixes; no announced address space [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/routing-status/data.json?resource=396

Routing/peering

NOT announced — announced=false; 0 RIS peers seeing it (0/323 v4, 0/321 v6); 0 announced prefixes/addresses; 0 observed neighbours; no upstreams or peers visible [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/as-overview/data.json?resource=396, https://stat.ripe.net/data/routing-status/data.json?resource=396

Peering policy

none active / not published; a PeeringDB org page nominally titled 'Air Force Systems Networking' (org 20118) exists but maps to unrelated low ASNs (AS65/123/175/221/301), not AS396, with empty website/policy/network-type fields (last updated 2018-06-02)

[Confirmed] — https://www.peeringdb.com/org/20118

RPKI

not assessable — AS396 announces no prefixes, so there are no ROAs to validate (RIPEstat rpki-validation skipped, no prefix) [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/routing-status/data.json?resource=396

AS rank / customer cone

Unknown — CAIDA ASRank/customer-cone lookup timed out and was not otherwise corroborated [Unknown] — no source (caida.error: operation aborted due to timeout)

Notable usage

Unknown for AS396 specifically; contextually part of DoD/Air Force network infrastructure (AFNET / AF enterprise), but no source ties AS396's (nonexistent) announced prefixes to a named usage [Unknown] — no source

Geo footprint

United States — registrant address Gunter Annex, Maxwell AFB, AL 36114; admin/tech/abuse (DISA-Columbus) at Whitehall, OH 43213 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/396

Block record note

ARIN returns the enclosing block autnum (handle AS379, startAutnum 379, endAutnum 508) rather than a distinct per-ASN record for 396; RIPEstat as-overview independently confirms resource='396' with the same holder (AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS - Air Force Systems Networking), so the block dates are attributed to AS396 as its allocation date

[Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/396, https://stat.ripe.net/data/as-overview/data.json?resource=396

Analyst note

Dormant legacy government ASN. ARIN returns the enclosing AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS (AS379–AS508) block record rather than a per-ASN record; RIPEstat confirms AS396 belongs to that Air Force/DISA block. All routing sources agree on zero announcements. No dedicated public operator website exists (internal DoD/Air Force network).