AS476

AS476 (AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS) is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN to Air Force Systems Networking, a United States Air Force / Department of Defense entity administratively tied to the 754th Electronic Systems Group at Gunter Annex, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. The ASN sits inside ARIN's bulk-allocated AS379–AS508 block reserved for USAF systems networking, and its registry status remains active even though the number itself carries no current BGP visibility: RIPEstat, CAIDA AS Rank, and bgp.he.net all agree it originates zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes today, with zero observed peers or upstreams and a customer cone limited to itself (CAIDA rank 79,459 of the global table). Historically, AS476 briefly announced a single /16 (132.18.0.0/16) for about four weeks between 2001-09-26 and 2001-10-23, the only routing activity visible in RIPE's archive — it has been dark ever since. RPKI posture cannot be meaningfully assessed because there is nothing currently announced to validate against. No public abuse signal, hijack report, or NANOG mailing-list reference to AS476 was found in either community-corroboration or security-focused research passes, consistent with a restricted, largely inactive DoD network rather than any operational track record, positive or negative. Administrative and abuse contact routes through DISA's Columbus, Ohio ARIN-registrations mailbox rather than a public NOC.

Operator

Air Force Systems Networking (ARIN org handle 7ESG); US Air Force / DoD; administratively tied to the 754th Electronic Systems Group, Gunter Annex, Maxwell AFB, AL [Confirmed for ARIN registrant; Likely for the 754 ELSG operational tie, single corroborating source] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/476, https://airforce.togetherweserved.com/unit/11470/754th-Electronic-Systems-Group

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/476

Allocated

1989-08-04, ARIN RDAP autnum TOP-LEVEL registration event (corroborated independently by two research angles); last changed 2008-06-06 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/476

Website / peering policy

Unknown / not applicable — no dedicated operator website, peering policy, or IR page exists for this legacy DoD block [Confirmed (absence verified)]

Org status

active (ARIN registry status); operationally unrouted/dormant in current BGP [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/476, https://bgp.he.net/AS476

Contacts

disa.columbus.ns.mbx.arin-registrations@mail.mil (abuse, per RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder, authoritative_rir: arin) [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/AS476

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal, hijack/leak incident, or NANOG-archive mention found for AS476 as of 2026-07-10, consistent with an unrouted/dormant network rather than a clean operational record

Network & routing

Network type

legacy U.S. Air Force / DoD ASN block; not a commercial ISP or network operator, no PeeringDB record [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/476

Size / routing

dormant — 0 IPv4 and 0 IPv6 prefixes announced; 0 RIS peers seeing it (0/326 v4, 0/321 v6); CAIDA degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0); customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/AS476, CAIDA ASRank API, https://bgp.he.net/AS476

RPKI

not assessable — no prefixes currently originated, so no ROAs to validate; bgp.he.net shows 0 RPKI-valid/invalid routes [Confirmed as N/A] — https://stat.ripe.net/AS476, https://bgp.he.net/AS476

Handle block

AS476 is a member of ARIN's bulk AS379–AS508 allocation, RDAP object name AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/476

Historical announcement

132.18.0.0/16 announced 2001-09-26 to 2001-10-23, then withdrawn; no announcements since [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/AS476

Analyst note

Restricted DoD/USAF ASN with no community footprint (NANOG, Reddit, outage history all came back Unknown/no data in the dedicated community-corroboration pass) — consistent with, not contradicted by, its inactive routing status.