AS553

AS553 is registered under RIPE NCC to BelWü-Koordination, the coordination unit for the Landeshochschulnetz Baden-Württemberg (BelWü) — the regional research-and-education network connecting roughly 100 scientific and academic institutions across Baden-Württemberg, Germany, including the state's universities, Hochschulen, and the Dual University of Baden-Württemberg. BelWü is administered by and housed at Universität Stuttgart, was founded in 1987, and is self-described by its operator as "the first regional IP network outside the USA." The RIPE RDAP autnum record's top-level registration event dates the current registry object to 2002-08-27, with a last-changed event of 2024-03-04; this is recorded as the allocated_date per registry-authority rules even though BelWü's own network predates the RIPE-DB era. Routing-wise AS553 is a mid-sized, actively announced network: 95 IPv4 and 4 IPv6 prefixes, roughly 2.1 million IPv4 addresses, a CAIDA AS rank of 1,249, and a customer cone of 27 ASNs / 6,776 prefixes. It runs an open peering policy (IRR set AS-BELWUE) with a strong preference for route-server sessions, peers at DE-CIX and ECIX Frankfurt, BW-IX Karlsruhe, and Stuttgart IX, and takes transit/R&E upstream from DFN, GÉANT, Telia/Arelion, NTT, and Deutsche Telekom. The operator self-declares BCP38 and MANRS compliance. No notable public abuse signal was found; ThreatFox and Spamhaus's live lookup pages were bot-gated and could not be directly confirmed, so those two specific checks are Unknown rather than asserted clean.

Operator

BelWü-Koordination (Landeshochschulnetz Baden-Württemberg), administered by/housed at Universität Stuttgart [Confirmed] — https://www.belwue.de/ueberuns/koordination.html, https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/553

Country / RIR

DE, RIPE NCC (whois.ripe.net) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/553

Allocated

2002-08-27 (RIPE RDAP autnum top-level "registration" event, 10:11:16Z) — first-party registry fact, recorded per rule even though it reflects the RIPE-DB object's registration rather than BelWü's 1987-era network origin; last changed 2024-03-04 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/553

Org status

active public-sector academic network coordination unit; RIPE NCC member/LIR; also DENIC eG and eco (Verband der Internetwirtschaft) member [Confirmed] — https://www.belwue.de/ueberuns/koordination.html

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-07-11 — no NANOG archive threads, not observed on Spamhaus DROP/ASN-DROP in search results; ThreatFox's and Spamhaus's own live per-ASN lookup pages were bot-gated (Cloudflare/403) and could not be directly confirmed, so those two specific sources are Unknown rather than confirmed-clean [Likely overall / Unknown for the two gated sources]

Abuse contact

abuse@belwue.de

Network & routing

Network type

regional research-and-education (R&E) network / academic backbone for Baden-Württemberg; founded 1987; also a RIPE LIR, DENIC eG member [Confirmed] — https://www.belwue.de/

Size

95 IPv4 prefixes / ~2,115,840 IPv4 addresses; 4 IPv6 prefixes — RIPEstat routing-status corroborated exactly by bgp.tools [Confirmed]

CAIDA rank / cone

AS rank 1,249 (clique member); customer cone 27 ASNs / 6,776 prefixes / 18,243,776 addresses; degree total 1,013 (customer 16, peer 992, provider 5) [Confirmed] — CAIDA ASRank API

Routing/peering

~926 observed neighbours (RIPEstat) / 931 peers (bgp.tools); upstreams AS1299 (Arelion/Telia), AS2914 (NTT), AS3320 (Deutsche Telekom), AS680 (DFN) [Likely — single-source bgp.tools, corroborated qualitatively by RDAP remarks naming Telia/DFN/Cogent/Core Backbone as transit]. IXPs: DE-CIX Frankfurt, ECIX Frankfurt, BW-IX Karlsruhe, Stuttgart IX

[Confirmed] — RDAP remarks

Peering policy

open; requires PeeringDB entry, IRR registration against AS-BELWUE, current NOC contacts; route-server sessions preferred at IXPs; PNI available at multiple sites [Confirmed] — https://www.belwue.de/netz/peering-policy.html

RPKI

operator self-declares BCP38/MANRS support [Confirmed — RDAP remarks]; exact valid/invalid route counts Unknown — two external single-fetch sources (bgp.tools vs bgp.he.net) disagreed and neither was independently corroborated

Notable usage

connects ~100 Baden-Württemberg academic/scientific institutions (9 state universities, 25+ Hochschulen, DHBW); upstream R&E connectivity via DFN (national) and GÉANT (international) [Confirmed] — https://www.belwue.de/

Related ASNs

none identified in this pass [Unknown]

Analyst note

Legacy low ASN (sub-1000) whose authoritative registry today is RIPE NCC, not ARIN, despite sitting in the historically ARIN-labeled AS1-1876 block per RIPEstat as-overview; no separate ARIN RDAP record exists to cross-check an earlier assignment date, so the RIPE registration event is the only first-party allocation date available.