AS438

AS438 is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN to Air Force Systems Networking (ARIN OrgId 7ESG, Maxwell AFB, Alabama), a U.S. Department of Defense / U.S. Air Force networking organization administered day-to-day by DISA's Columbus, Ohio registration office. AS438 has no discrete ARIN RDAP object of its own — an autnum lookup for 438 resolves into the shared legacy block record AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS, which spans AS379 through AS508 and carries the top-level ARIN registration date of 1989-08-04. The key triage point for AS438 is that it is effectively dormant: every routing source consulted (RIPEstat as-overview/routing-status, CAIDA AS Rank, and the RDAP payload) agrees it announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes, is seen by zero RIS peers (0/324 v4, 0/320 v6), has zero observed neighbours, zero upstreams, zero customers, and no IXP memberships. Its CAIDA AS rank of 79,459 sits near the bottom of the global ranking, reflecting complete routing inactivity, and its customer cone is a singleton (itself, 0 prefixes, 0 addresses). Consistent with a DoD/military internal-networking allocation, there is no operator-official website, about page, PeeringDB record (404), or published peering policy — external DoD connectivity is centrally gated through DISN gateways per DODI 8010.01 rather than negotiated bilaterally. No notable public abuse signal was found as of July 2026 across Spamhaus, NANOG archives, or general threat-intel searches — a null consistent with a clean, unannounced legacy ASN.

Operator

Air Force Systems Networking (US DoD / US Air Force; ARIN OrgId 7ESG, Maxwell AFB, AL; administered by DISA-Columbus) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/438

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder (authoritative_rir: arin); CAIDA country.iso=US

Allocated

1989-08-04 (ARIN registry TOP-LEVEL autnum registration event on the parent block record AS379/AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS into which AS438 resolves — a first-party RIR fact, NOT an IEEE date); block-level last changed 2008-06-06 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum top-level events[]

Org status

active per ARIN RDAP registry status (inherited from parent block record); dormant from a BGP routing perspective per third-party data (0 prefixes, 0 peers, block-level last change 2008-06-06). No operator-official confirmation of current operational use [Confirmed for RDAP status + dormancy; Unknown for operator-official operational confirmation] — ARIN RDAP autnum/438, bgp.he.net/AS438

Contacts

abuse disa.columbus.ns.mbx.arin-registrations@mail.mil; registrant Air Force Systems Networking, 501 East Moore Dr., Maxwell AFB, AL 36114; admin/tech/abuse DISA-Columbus, 300 North James Road, Whitehall, OH 43213 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/438, RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-07-02 — no source specifically naming AS438 in Spamhaus (general blocklist / ASN-DROP references), NANOG archives, or general BGP-hijack/botnet/route-leak searches; consistent with a clean, dormant, largely-unused DoD-associated ASN

Network & routing

Network type

U.S. government/military network (DoD / U.S. Air Force), administered by DISA; not a commercial ISP, hosting, content, or transit network; AS438 is a within-block number of the historical AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS allocation (AS379–AS508) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/438

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

Routing/peering

NOT announced (RIPEstat as-overview announced=false) — 0 RIS peers seeing it (0/324 v4, 0/320 v6), 0 observed neighbours; CAIDA degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0); no upstreams or peers visible [Confirmed]. No PeeringDB record (404); DoD external connectivity centrally gated via DISN gateways per DODI 8010.01

[Confirmed for absence] — peeringdb.com/asn/438, DODI 8010.01

RPKI

not assessable — AS438 announces no prefixes, so there are no ROAs to validate (RIPEstat rpki-validation skipped, no prefix supplied) [Unknown]

Notable usage

none documented on any operator-official source; AS438 is a dormant within-block number of AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS. Third-party BGP data (bgp.he.net, ipinfo.io) corroborates full dormancy: 0 IPv4 prefixes, 0 IPv6 prefixes, 0 observed peers [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net/AS438, ipinfo.io/AS438

Related ASNs

AS379 (AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS block record / parent); block spans AS379–AS508, with numerous already-researched siblings (AS385, AS386, AS389–AS391, AS393, AS397, AS398, AS400) sharing registrant Air Force Systems Networking [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/438

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant legacy within-block ASN registered to a U.S. DoD/Air Force networking org; RDAP resolves to the shared AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS block record (AS379), not a discrete AS438 object. Clean, unannounced ASN. allocated_date is the parent block's first-party RIR registration event and is recorded, not nulled.