AS473

AS473 is a legacy autonomous system number that ARIN's RDAP registry records as part of a single block registration, AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS, spanning AS379 through AS508 and dated 1989-08-04 — the top-level registration event on the autnum object, and thus the correct allocated_date for every ASN inside the block, including AS473. The registrant is 7ESG, "Air Force Systems Networking," headquartered at Maxwell Air Force Base's Gunter Annex in Alabama, with abuse, administrative, and technical contacts routed through DISA-Columbus. Unlike many entries in this dataset, AS473 is not a commercial network or content provider; it is a U.S. Department of Defense allocation that appears to have gone unused for well over a decade. Every routing source consulted — RIPEstat and CAIDA — agrees the ASN currently announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes, has zero visible BGP relationships, and sits in a customer cone of exactly one (itself). Historically it did originate traffic: RIPEstat's routing-status data shows a first-seen announcement of 199.251.6.0/24 in September 2001 and a last-seen announcement of 131.16.243.0/24 in December 2013, after which it disappears from the global routing table entirely. No dedicated operator website, PeeringDB network object, or public peering policy exists for AS473 specifically. No abuse or security signal was found in Spamhaus's ASN-DROP list, abuse.ch feeds, or NANOG archives, which is unsurprising for an ASN that has not routed traffic since 2013.

Operator

Air Force Systems Networking (org handle 7ESG), U.S. Department of Defense / Air Force network administered via DISA-Columbus registration services [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/473

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP; RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder (authoritative_rir: arin)

Allocated

1989-08-04 (ARIN RDAP autnum top-level registration event for block AS379–AS508, name AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS); last changed 2008-06-06 [Confirmed, corroborated independently by two research angles reading the same top-level events[] array and excluding entity-level decoy dates] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/473

Operator website / peering policy

Unknown — no dedicated operator website found; the registrant org's PeeringDB profile (org/20118) lists no website and does not include AS473 among its member networks; no public peering policy found (expected for a DoD-internal block)

[Confirmed absence, verified via search] — https://www.peeringdb.com/org/20118

Org status

ARIN registry status "active" (registration itself not revoked), but operationally dormant/unrouted since December 2013 — a legacy 1989 DoD allocation [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP; stat.ripe.net/AS473

Contacts

abuse/admin/tech contact disa.columbus.ns.mbx.arin-registrations@mail.mil (DISA-Columbus, Whitehall, OH); registrant address 501 East Moore Dr., Bldg 884 Rm 1100 Gunther Annex, Maxwell AFB, AL 36114 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/473

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-07-09 — not on Spamhaus ASN-DROP, abuse.ch feeds, NANOG/seclists archives, or BGP-hijack incident retrospectives

Network & routing

Network type

U.S. DoD/Air Force network block, not a commercial ISP; part of a contiguous legacy ARIN block (AS379–AS508) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum/473

Size / routing status

dormant — 0 IPv4/IPv6 prefixes announced as of 2026-07-10; customer cone = singleton (1 ASN, 0 prefixes, 0 addresses); CAIDA AS rank 79459 [Confirmed] — RIPEstat as-overview/routing-status; CAIDA ASRank (asrank.caida.org/asns/473)

Routing/peering

NOT announced — 0/326 v4 RIS peers, 0/321 v6 RIS peers; CAIDA AS-degree total 0 (0 customer/peer/provider); no IXP membership (ixp: null) [Confirmed] — stat.ripe.net/AS473; asrank.caida.org/asns/473. One historical IPv4 BGP peer, AS27139 (also U.S. DoD), per Hurricane Electric's BGP toolkit

[Likely, single-sourced] — https://bgp.he.net/AS473

Historical routing

first seen announcing 199.251.6.0/24 on 2001-09-26; last seen announcing 131.16.243.0/24 on 2013-12-19; no announcements since [Confirmed] — stat.ripe.net/AS473 routing-status

RPKI

not assessable — no currently announced prefixes, so RIPEstat's rpki-validation check was skipped (requires a prefix parameter) [Confirmed] — stat.ripe.net/AS473

Related ASNs / block context

part of AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS, a contiguous ARIN block spanning AS379–AS508, all registered to Air Force Systems Networking [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/473

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant legacy DoD/Air Force ASN within a large 1989 block registration; last routed in 2013, no abuse signal, no public operator website — consistent with an inactive reserved allocation inside a larger military block.