AS6830

AS6830 is the backbone autonomous system of Liberty Global, the pan-European cable and broadband group, registered under RIPE NCC to Liberty Global Europe Holding B.V. (RIPE org handle ORG-UNB2-RIPE) in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The network is historically branded AORTA and was formerly held by UPC Broadband Holding B.V.; its IRR as-set is RIPE::AS6830:AS-AORTA. It is a transit-free Tier 1 backbone that carries the traffic of Liberty Global's national cable subsidiaries — VodafoneZiggo (Netherlands), Telenet (Belgium), Virgin Media O2 (UK), Virgin Media Ireland and Sunrise (Switzerland) among others — serving on the order of 20+ million broadband connections across Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Slovak Republic, plus partner reach into the Caribbean via Liberty Latin America. The RIPE RDAP autnum top-level registration event dates the record to 2002-07-19 (last modified 2025-10-15); a third-party historical allocation date of 1996-11-13, attributed to the predecessor UPC/AORTA registration, is reported by bgp.he.net and bgp.tools but is not the authoritative RDAP event. RIPEstat confirms the ASN is actively announced, originating roughly 160–161 IPv4 prefixes (~1.17M addresses) and 7 IPv6 prefixes; first BGP visibility in RIS dates to 2000-08-18 (predating the RDAP record, consistent with operational use before formal record creation). Liberty Global publishes formal Global Peering Principles (December 2020) with a restrictive, selective policy and adopted RPKI-OV invalid-route filtering at its EBGP edge on 2023-04-05, earning a "Safe" status on Cloudflare's isBGPSafeYet tracker. No notable public abuse signal beyond the ordinary residential-ISP noise floor was found as of June 2026; CAIDA AS-rank and customer-cone figures could not be retrieved (API timeout) and stay Unknown.

Operator

Liberty Global Europe Holding B.V. (RIPE org handle ORG-UNB2-RIPE; operating brand Liberty Global; formerly UPC Broadband Holding / AORTA), Hildegard von Bingenstraat 28, 1081 LH Amsterdam, Netherlands [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP autnum/6830, bgp.he.net/AS6830

Country / RIR

NL, RIPE NCC (16-bit block 6656–6911 assigned by RIPE NCC per IANA registry) [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP autnum/6830, RIPEstat as-overview

Allocated

2002-07-19 (RIPE RDAP autnum TOP-LEVEL registration event; eventAction "registration", eventDate 2002-07-19T12:18:50Z); last changed 2025-10-15 [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP autnum/6830 top-level events. Note: bgp.he.net / bgp.tools cite a third-party historical date of 1996-11-13 for the predecessor UPC/AORTA registration

[Likely] — bgp.he.net/AS6830, bgp.tools/as/6830

Org status

public company — parent Liberty Global, listed on Nasdaq and the London Stock Exchange, redomiciled to Bermuda Nov 2023; ASN-holder Liberty Global Europe Holding B.V. is a Netherlands subsidiary [Confirmed] — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Global, RIPE RDAP autnum/6830

Contacts

abuse@libertyglobal.com; NOC noc@libertyglobal.com (+31 20 778 9840); peering/routing peering@aorta.net; PeeringDB http://as6830.peeringdb.com [Confirmed] — RIPE RDAP autnum/6830, phish.report/contacts/LibertyGlobal

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal as of 2026-06-25 beyond a large residential ISP's noise floor — CleanTalk ~1.91% spam rate (367 of 19,214 IPs), low-confidence AbuseIPDB individual-IP reports, expected Spamhaus PBL listings for dynamic ranges; no SBL/XBL listing, no NANOG abuse threads, not in top phishing/DDoS-hosting reports. Cloudflare research notes Tier 1 First-AS hijacking exposure and a flagged bogon announcement [Confirmed for cited metrics; Likely for the Spamhaus inference] — cleantalk.org/blacklists/as6830, abuseipdb.com, isbgpsafeyet.com, blog.cloudflare.com/enforce-first-as-bgp

Network & routing

Network type

Tier 1 cable/ISP backbone (transit-free; no upstream providers); also sells commercial IP transit (AORTA). Pan-European broadband operator [Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/asn/6830, libertyglobal.com IP transit services, radar.cloudflare.com/as6830

Size

actively announced — ~160–161 IPv4 prefixes (~1,175,296–1,191,936 addresses) and 7 IPv6 prefixes (RIPEstat routing-status: 160 v4 / 7 v6; announced-prefixes: 161 v4 / 7 v6; bgp.he.net: 170 v4 / 9 v6 incl. more-specifics) [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status, bgp.he.net/AS6830

Routing/peering

announced=true; first RIS visibility 2000-08-18 (212.17.101.0/24); ~256–272 BGP peers observed; restrictive/selective peering per Global Peering Principles (Dec 2020) — needs EU footprint in 5+ countries (or 2+ non-EU), ≥7 Gbps 95th-percentile, 1:3–3:1 ratio, ≥100 Gbps inter-hub, 24/7 NOC, BCP38/46, 10G/100G ports, NDA + contract; requests reviewed monthly; contact peering@aorta.net [Confirmed for policy/contacts; Likely for exact peer counts] — libertyglobal.com Global Peering Principles, RIPE RDAP remarks, bgp.he.net/AS6830

Upstreams

none (transit-free Tier 1); bgp.he.net lists transit relationships incl. Cogent (AS174), Arelion/Telia (AS1299), Lumen/Level 3 (AS3356), NTT (AS2914) [Likely] — bgp.he.net/AS6830, peeringdb.com/asn/6830

RPKI

mixed/substantial — began filtering RPKI-OV invalid routes at EBGP edge 2023-04-05 ("Safe" on Cloudflare isBGPSafeYet); ~167 originated prefixes RPKI-valid vs ~11 RPKI-invalid (~94% valid); bgp.he.net also flags a bogon announcement [Confirmed for filtering date/status; Likely for exact valid/invalid split] — isbgpsafeyet.com, bgp.he.net/AS6830

Notable usage

backbone for Liberty Global's European cable subsidiaries (VodafoneZiggo, Telenet, Virgin Media O2, Virgin Media Ireland, Sunrise); ~20+ million broadband connections; connected to Liberty Latin America for the Caribbean; participates in ~15–16 IXPs incl. AMS-IX, LINX LON1, NL-IX and Equinix sites (Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Milan, Zurich, Ashburn)

[Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/asn/6830, bgp.he.net/AS6830, libertyiptransit.com

AS rank / customer cone

Unknown — CAIDA AS-rank API timed out; bgp.he.net publishes no numeric rank. Scale is large (~256+ neighbours, ~24,700–26,600 total routes observed) consistent with a major European access/transit network [Unknown for CAIDA figures] — bgp.he.net/AS6830

Related ASNs

AS5089 (Virgin Media O2, UK), AS33915 (VodafoneZiggo, NL), AS6848 (Telenet, BE), AS6730 (Sunrise, CH) [Confirmed for subsidiary identities; Likely for the exact AS6830↔subsidiary routing relationships] — radar.cloudflare.com/as6830, peeringdb.com/asn/6830

Analyst note

Active Tier 1 European cable backbone under a publicly traded operator. The org entity ORG-UNB2-RIPE is a registrant decoy for date purposes; allocated_date taken from the autnum top-level registration event (2002-07-19), not the org or any third-party historical date.