AS6939

AS6939 is the backbone of Hurricane Electric, a Fremont, California IP-transit provider (founded 1996) registered under ARIN. It is best known for two things: being the most-peered network on the Internet, and being a dominant force in IPv6. In the observed view it carries on the order of 11,000+ peering sessions — #1 globally by peer count — and is present at roughly 336 Internet Exchanges. It also runs the widely used free IPv6 tunnel broker at tunnelbroker.net, the bgp.he.net BGP toolkit, and an IPv6 certification program. CAIDA AS Rank places it #7 globally, with a customer cone near 21,580 ASNs and an unusually high peer-to-customer ratio (thousands of peers against a smaller customer base) that reflects its aggressive settlement-free peering posture. Two analyst caveats follow from this. First, HE famously cannot reach Cogent (AS174) over settlement-free IPv6 peering, so parts of the IPv6 Internet do not interconnect directly via these two. Second, a tunnelbroker IPv6 endpoint can belong to an end user anywhere on Earth, so geolocation and attribution from an HE IPv6 are weaker than for most ASNs. HE tightened tunnel-related signups in 2020 due to abuse.

Operator

Hurricane Electric LLC [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP/WHOIS

Country / RIR

US (Fremont, CA), ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP

Allocated

1996-06-28 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP (consistent with HE's 1996 founding; org HURC has no RegDate in ARIN)

Org status

active — he.net

Security/abuse context

very open peering/transit posture means HE is periodically cited in security research for transiting/hosting C2 (e.g., a Darktrace case study citing AS6939); HE tightened free BGP-over-tunnel signups in 2020 due to abuse; third-party services tag HE IPs with tor/bittorrent/crawler/anycast. No "bulletproof hosting" designation from Spamhaus found as of 2026-06-03 — darktrace.com, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Electric, ipinfo.io

Network & routing

Network type

transit-backbone + IPv6 backbone / tunnel broker [Confirmed] — CAIDA + he.net

Size

most-peered network globally (~11,016–11,040 peers, #1); ~336 IXPs; CAIDA AS Rank #7 — customer cone ~21,580 ASNs / ~395,651 prefixes / ~578,379,557 addresses; transit degree ~9,721; ~7,515 peers, ~2,206 customers — asrank.caida.org/asns/6939, bgp.he.net (2026-05)

Routing/peering

very open ("willing to peer IPv4 and IPv6 with networks at common exchange points"); RPKI validating ROV; IPv4 originated ~178–180, IPv6 originated ~20–24 but announces ~64,731 IPv6 prefixes (transit) — he.net/peering.html, bgp.tools

Notable usage

large IP transit; free IPv6 tunnel broker (tunnelbroker.net); bgp.he.net toolkit; IPv6 certification — he.net

Related ASNs

long-running IPv6 peering dispute with AS174 (Cogent)

Analyst note

Seen both mid-path (transit/peering) and as origin for tunnel-broker users — a tunnelbroker IPv6 endpoint can be an end user anywhere in the world, so geo/attribution from an HE IPv6 is weaker than for most ASNs.