AS456

AS456 is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN to Air Force Systems Networking, part of a large United States Department of Defense / U.S. Air Force address block (the AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS range spans AS379–AS508). The registrant organization (ARIN handle 7ESG) is associated with Maxwell AFB, Alabama, while day-to-day abuse, administrative, and technical contact duties are delegated to DISA-Columbus in Whitehall, Ohio. The autnum object's own top-level RDAP registration event dates to 1989-08-04, with a last-changed event of 2008-06-06; these are distinct from — and should not be confused with — the more recent entity-level record touches on the registrant org (2025-03-13) and the DISA-Columbus contact (2026-02-12), which reflect routine contact-record maintenance rather than any change to the ASN's own allocation. Every routing source consulted (RIPEstat, CAIDA AS Rank) agrees AS456 is not currently announced: zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes, zero visible BGP peers, zero upstreams, and a customer cone limited to itself. CAIDA's AS rank of 79,459 places it near the bottom of the global ranking, consistent with a dormant, unrouted allocation. RIPEstat's routing-status history does show intermittent past announcement of a /24-scale block (143.124.0.0/24 first seen 2021-07-02; 143.124.1.0/24 last seen 2023-07-19), so the ASN was briefly live in BGP within the last several years even though it shows no current announcements. No notable public abuse signal was found — Spamhaus SBL/DROP/ASN-DROP, abuse.ch, and NANOG archives returned nothing naming AS456 specifically — consistent with a government-operated allocation rather than commercial hosting/transit space.

Operator

Air Force Systems Networking (U.S. Department of Defense / U.S. Air Force; ARIN org handle 7ESG, registrant address Maxwell AFB, AL); abuse/admin/tech delegated to DISA-Columbus, Whitehall, OH (REGIS10-ARIN) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/456

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/456

Allocated

1989-08-04 (ARIN RDAP autnum top-level registration event — first-party RIR fact, not an IEEE date); last changed 2008-06-06 (autnum top-level "last changed" event; more recent entity-level touches on 2025-03-13 and 2026-02-12 apply to contact/org records, not the autnum itself)

[Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/456

Org status

registry status "active" for the parent AS379–AS508 block per ARIN RDAP; operationally appears dormant per third-party aggregation (zero hosted space/domains); no merger, dissolution, or renaming found — a standing DoD/Air Force allocation

[Likely] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/456, https://ipinfo.io/AS456

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-07-05 — not in Spamhaus SBL/DROP/ASN-DROP, abuse.ch, or NANOG archives; absence-of-evidence from the sources checked, not a dedicated per-ASN reputation-tool scan

Abuse contact

disa.columbus.ns.mbx.arin-registrations@mail.mil

Network & routing

Network type

U.S. military / government network (DoD, Air Force / DISA); not a commercial ISP, transit provider, or content network; falls within the AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS range (AS379–AS508) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/456

Size / routing

not currently announced — 0 IPv4 and 0 IPv6 prefixes; 0/325 v4 and 0/321 v6 RIS peer visibility; observed_neighbours 0; customer cone limited to itself (1 ASN, 0 prefixes, 0 addresses) [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/AS456, https://asrank.caida.org/asns/456

Historical routing

intermittently announced a /24 in the recent past — first_seen 143.124.0.0/24 (2021-07-02), last_seen 143.124.1.0/24 (2023-07-19) — not currently live [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/AS456

CAIDA AS rank

79,459; as-degree total/customer/peer/provider all 0; clique_member false [Confirmed] — https://asrank.caida.org/asns/456

RPKI

not evaluated — RIPEstat rpki-validation was skipped because it requires a specific prefix parameter, which was not supplied [Unknown]

Peering policy

not publicly published; no af.mil/disa.mil page or matching PeeringDB entry publishes peering terms for this ASN. A PeeringDB org record for "Air Force Systems Networking" (org id 20118) exists but lists a disjoint set of ASNs (65, 123, 175, 221, 301) with no populated fields and does not reference AS456 — treated as non-authoritative for this ASN

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

Notable usage

no public evidence of active routing or notable commercial/public-internet usage; IPinfo aggregation lists 0 hosted IPv4/IPv6 space and 0 domains, characterizing it as inactive despite the registry status of "active" on the parent block [Likely] — https://ipinfo.io/AS456

Geo footprint

US (CAIDA country ISO); no IXP presence; CAIDA longitude/latitude both 0.0 is a null-island placeholder, not a real coordinate [Confirmed] — https://asrank.caida.org/asns/456

Analyst note

Government/DoD block ASN, currently unrouted but with a brief 2021–2023 announcement history; registry-active but operationally dormant. Distinguish the autnum's own 1989-08-04 registration date from later entity-record touches that do not represent re-allocation.