AS601

AS601 is a legacy autonomous system number registered under ARIN to Bell Canada, the incumbent national telecommunications carrier and a wholly owned subsidiary of publicly traded BCE Inc. (TSX/NYSE: BCE). ARIN's RDAP record gives the registration name BACOM4-AS and shows a top-level autnum registration event dated 1999-03-03, placing this allocation within Bell's late-1990s IP network buildout under the "BACOM" (Bell Communications) naming series, alongside sibling blocks such as AS577. The record's top-level "last changed" event is dated 2006-01-30. Every routing source consulted — RIPEstat, CAIDA AS Rank, bgp.he.net, and bgp.tools — agrees the ASN is currently dormant: zero announced IPv4 prefixes, zero IPv6 prefixes, zero observed BGP peers or upstreams, and a customer cone limited to itself. Its CAIDA AS rank of 79,459 places it near the bottom of the global ranking, consistent with no live routing activity. There is no PeeringDB profile for AS601 itself (peeringdb.com/asn/601 returns 404), and no AS601-specific peering policy exists; Bell's wholesale division publishes only a general, non-AS-number-scoped tiered transit/peering framework. Bell Canada's actual production backbone runs under AS577 ("Bell Canada Backbone," roughly 330 observed peers and ~16,359 prefixes), with AS855 (Bell Aliant) as a related Atlantic-Canada core ASN. No notable public abuse or threat-intelligence signal was found tied to AS601 as of mid-July 2026.

Operator

Bell Canada, a subsidiary of publicly traded BCE Inc. (TSX/NYSE: BCE) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/601, https://www.bce.ca/

RIR registration name

BACOM4-AS [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/601

Country / RIR

CA, ARIN [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/601

Allocated

1999-03-03 (ARIN RDAP autnum top-level "registration" event, corroborated independently by two research angles after recovering the full RDAP payload); last changed 2006-01-30 (top-level "last changed" event) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/601

Org status

Bell Canada is an active, major incumbent Canadian telecom operator (ILEC), wholly owned by publicly traded BCE Inc. [Confirmed] — https://www.bce.ca/

Contacts

abuse@bell.ca, abuse@bellnexxia.net, abuse@sympatico.ca; registered POC address 160 Elgin Street, Ottawa, ON, Canada [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/601

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-07-16 — not in Spamhaus ASN-DROP (full document not independently confirmed, only header text retrieved), NANOG mailing-list archives, or major threat-intel platform coverage; consistent with a dormant ASN under an established carrier

Network & routing

Network type

legacy/dormant ASN under a large incumbent Canadian telecom; not the operator's active production backbone [Confirmed] — https://bgp.he.net/AS601, https://ipinfo.io/AS601

Size / routing activity

0 announced IPv4 prefixes, 0 IPv6 prefixes, 0 observed peers, 0 upstreams; customer cone = singleton (1 ASN, 0 prefixes, 0 addresses); CAIDA AS rank 79,459 [Confirmed] — https://bgp.he.net/AS601, https://bgp.tools/as/601, RIPEstat routing-status (resource=601), CAIDA ASRank

Peering

no PeeringDB profile for AS601 (peeringdb.com/asn/601 = 404); no AS601-specific peering policy; Bell's wholesale division publishes only a general tiered transit/peering framework not scoped to any single AS number

[Confirmed] — https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/601, https://wholesale.bell.ca/data-internet/internet-connect-service

RPKI

not assessable — no announced prefixes, so no ROAs to validate [Likely] — https://bgp.he.net/AS601

Notable usage / related ASNs

registration name "BACOM4-AS" and 1999 date place AS601 in Bell's late-1990s IP buildout, alongside sibling allocations; Bell's active operator backbone runs under AS577 ("Bell Canada Backbone," ~330 peers, ~16,359 prefixes), with AS855 (Bell Aliant) as a related Atlantic-Canada core ASN

[Likely] — https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/577, https://bgp.he.net/AS855

Registry status

active (registration itself is not deregistered, though routing is dormant) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/601

Analyst note

Dormant legacy ASN registered to Bell Canada; WHOIS/RDAP resolves cleanly but live routing runs under AS577, not AS601. All routing sources agree on zero announcements, zero peers, zero cone.