AS496

AS496 is a legacy ARIN-registered autonomous system number belonging to the U.S. Air Force's Air Force Systems Networking program (ARIN organization handle 7ESG), part of the Department of Defense. ARIN represents this allocation as a single flat block record, AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS, spanning AS379 through AS508 — AS496 falls within that contiguous range rather than having its own discrete registry record. The block's top-level RDAP registration event dates to 1989-08-04, with a last-changed event of 2008-06-06, placing it among the older DoD-era ASN assignments still on ARIN's books. Administrative, abuse, and technical contact routes through DISA-Columbus rather than the Air Force registrant entity directly. Operationally, AS496 is dormant: RIPEstat and CAIDA agree it announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes, is invisible to all 327 IPv4 and 321 IPv6 RIS route-collector peers, has zero observed BGP neighbours, and its CAIDA customer cone contains only itself. No RPKI posture is assessable because there are no live routes to validate. No public abuse, blocklist, or threat-feed signal was found for AS496 as of 2026-07-10 across Spamhaus and NANOG archive searches — an expected null given the absence of any announced traffic surface, not a coverage gap. Registrant address ties to Maxwell AFB's Gunther Annex in Montgomery, Alabama.

Operator

Air Force Systems Networking (US Air Force / DoD; ARIN org handle 7ESG) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/496

Country / RIR

US, ARIN [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/496; https://stat.ripe.net/data/abuse-contact-finder/data.json?resource=496

Allocated

1989-08-04 (ARIN RDAP top-level autnum "registration" event for the AS379–AS508 block); last changed 2008-06-06 (top-level "last changed" event) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/379 (cross-checked by A1 raw JSON and A3, which explicitly excluded the decoy entity-level dates: REGIS10-ARIN entity registered 2009-06-24/changed 2026-02-12, and the 7ESG registrant-org entity registered 2008-06-05/changed 2025-03-13 — neither is the ASN's own allocation date)

Org status

active per ARIN RDAP status array, though currently unrouted [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/496

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-07-10 — not in Spamhaus blocklists/DROP or NANOG mailing-list archives; consistent with a dormant, unrouted ASN having no active traffic surface

Abuse contact

disa.columbus.ns.mbx.arin-registrations@mail.mil (authoritative RIR: ARIN)

Network & routing

Network type

government/military (US Air Force/DoD) internal network infrastructure, unrouted/dormant [Likely] — https://bgp.he.net/AS496

Size

dormant — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 addresses, 0 IPv6 prefixes; customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/routing-status/data.json?resource=496; https://api.asrank.caida.org/v2/restful/asns/496

Routing/peering

NOT announced — 0 of 327 RIS peers see it in IPv4, 0 of 321 in IPv6; CAIDA AS degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0); no upstreams or peers visible in any source [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/routing-status/data.json?resource=496; https://api.asrank.caida.org/v2/restful/asns/496

RPKI

not assessable — AS496 announces no prefixes, so there are no live routes or ROAs to validate [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/rpki-validation/data.json?resource=496

CAIDA AS rank

79459; cliqueMember false; seen false [Confirmed] — https://api.asrank.caida.org/v2/restful/asns/496

Peering policy / official website

Unknown / not published — no dedicated public operator website was located, and the PeeringDB org record (org 20118) is incomplete (no website, no policy text, does not list AS496) [Unknown] — https://www.peeringdb.com/org/20118

Registry block name

AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS, a single flat ARIN record spanning AS379–AS508 (AS496 falls inside this range; no discrete per-ASN sub-record) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/379

Registrant address

501 East Moore Dr, Bldg 884 Rm 1100, Gunther Annex, Maxwell AFB, AL 36114, United States [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/496

Operating unit

possibly associated with the 754th Electronic Systems Group per a third-party veterans' history site; single-source and not corroborated by any ARIN or DoD record [Unknown] — https://airforce.togetherweserved.com/unit/11470/754th-Electronic-Systems-Group

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant DoD-era ASN inside ARIN's shared AFCONC-BLOCK1-AS flat block (AS379–AS508); registry-active but zero routing footprint across all sources checked.