AS696

AS696 is a dormant, unannounced legacy/test autonomous system registered under RIPE to SWITCH, Switzerland's national research-and-education network operator — its registry status reads "active," but it announces zero routed prefixes today.

RIPE RDAP lists AS696 under the handle "SWITCH-TEST2," registered to org SWITCH (ORG-SG2-RIPE, Werdstrasse 2, 8021 Zurich, Switzerland). The autnum's top-level registration event is dated 2002-09-24, with a last-changed event of 2021-10-19; abuse contact is abuse@switch.ch.

AS696 is not SWITCH's production network. SWITCH's actual peering and NREN infrastructure runs under AS559, which carries live BGP sessions and a published selective peering policy. AS696 is a separate, inactive test/reserved allocation under the same organizational RIPE record — SWITCH-wide narrative content (mission, peering policy, NOC operations) properly belongs to AS559, not AS696, and should not be conflated with it.

Routing data from bgp.he.net and bgp.tools agrees AS696 originates zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes, with zero visible BGP peers, upstreams, or downstreams. RIPEstat's as-overview data likewise flags it as not announced. AS rank, customer cone size, and RPKI posture are all unconfirmed for this ASN since it has no live routing footprint to measure.

Allocated (RIPE RDAP top-level autnum registration event)

2002-09-24; last changed: 2021-10-19 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/696

Operator legal identity

SWITCH, a Swiss non-profit foundation established 1987 by the Swiss Confederation and the eight university cantons; operates SWITCHlan (NREN) and the .ch/.li registry [Confirmed] — https://www.switch.ch/en/about-us

Org status

RIPE RDAP status ACTIVE despite zero routing activity — functionally dormant [Confirmed] — https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/696

Website

https://www.switch.ch/ [Confirmed]

Abuse contact

abuse@switch.ch

Security/abuse context

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-07-23 (RIPEstat, bgp.he.net, Spamhaus DROP/ASN-DROP); AbuseIPDB unverified (403) [Likely] — https://stat.ripe.net/data/as-overview/data.json?resource=AS696, https://www.spamhaus.org/blocklists/do-not-route-or-peer/

Network & routing

Network type

test/reserved ASN under SWITCH's org record, distinct from SWITCH's production/peering ASN AS559 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/696, https://ipinfo.io/AS696

Routing status

0 IPv4 prefixes, 0 IPv6 prefixes, 0 BGP peers, not announced [Confirmed] — https://bgp.he.net/AS696, https://bgp.tools/as/696, https://stat.ripe.net/data/as-overview/data.json?resource=AS696

AS rank / customer cone

Unknown — no meaningful CAIDA rank or cone data for a non-announcing ASN [Unknown] — https://bgp.tools/as/696

RPKI posture

Unknown — not indicated in the routing sources checked [Unknown]

Related ASN

AS559 (SWITCH's actual production/peering network) [Confirmed] — https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/559

ASN / registry name

AS696 / "SWITCH-TEST2" [Confirmed] — https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/696

Registrant org / RIR

SWITCH (ORG-SG2-RIPE), Werdstrasse 2, 8021 Zurich, Switzerland / RIPE NCC [Confirmed] — https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/696