AS697

AS697 is a dormant legacy autonomous system, transferred via ARIN's ERX process into RIPE NCC's registry and originally registered under the AS name EASINET-AS2 to Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD), a West German research institute; it announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes today and carries no live BGP visibility.

GMD operated AS697 as part of EASInet, IBM's late-1980s European Academic Supercomputing Initiative Network connecting European research and supercomputing partners. GMD itself was absorbed into the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in 2001 and no longer exists as an independent entity, and no successor organization has been found claiming operational responsibility for AS697 since.

The RIPE RDAP record's top-level registration event is dated 2002-09-19, marking the ERX migration of the ASN's database object from ARIN into RIPE NCC's registry; the object was last changed 2017-11-15. Free-text remarks in the same record preserve older ARIN "changed" timestamps from 1990-08-07 and 1991-01-10, and a third-party source (bgp.tools) separately displays a 1993 registration date — neither overrides the authoritative top-level RDAP event.

Routing data across RIPEstat, CAIDA ASRank, and bgp.he.net agree: AS697 is invisible to all 324 sampled IPv4 and 321 IPv6 RIS peers, holds a CAIDA rank of 79,459, a singleton customer cone (0 prefixes, 0 addresses), and zero customer/peer/provider degree. Legacy IRR remarks in the RIPE object reference AS590 and AS690 as historical import/export partners, but this predates the current unrouted state and is uncorroborated by any live BGP table.

Operator

Historical — Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD), Sankt Augustin/Bonn, West Germany; GMD merged into Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in 2001 and no current operator has been identified [Confirmed] — https://rest.db.ripe.net/ripe/aut-num/AS697.json, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/GMD-Forschungszentrum_Informationstechnik

Country / RIR

DE (historical); registry RIPE NCC, an ERX-transferred legacy ASN originally issued by ARIN [Confirmed] — https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/697

Allocated

2002-09-19 (RIPE RDAP top-level registration event, marking the ERX transfer of the database object from ARIN to RIPE — not necessarily GMD's original 1980s/1990s allocation); last changed 2017-11-15 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/697

Org status

Defunct/orphaned — the original registrant (GMD) dissolved in 2001; RIPEstat's holder field shows a generic placeholder ("UNSPECIFIED - IDDQD-AS"), not a confirmed current owner [Confirmed] — https://rest.db.ripe.net/ripe/aut-num/AS697.json, https://rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/697

Contacts

No abuse contacts returned by RIPEstat's abuse-contact-finder for this resource [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/697

IANA Reference

none found (left blank rather than invented) [Unknown]

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

No notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-07-24 — absent from the Spamhaus ASN-DROP list; no NANOG or threat-feed reporting located

Network & routing

Network type

Legacy research-network ASN; RIPE aut-num descr = "EASInet Test", originally the "EASInet Operations Center" for IBM's European Academic Supercomputing Initiative Network [Likely] — https://rest.db.ripe.net/ripe/aut-num/AS697.json

Size

Dormant — 0 IPv4 and 0 IPv6 prefixes announced; CAIDA customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/697, https://asrank.caida.org/asns/697

Routing/peering

Not announced — 0 of 324 IPv4 and 0 of 321 IPv6 RIS peers see it; CAIDA degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0); no live upstreams or peers. Legacy RIPE IRR remarks reference AS590/AS690 as historical import/export partners [Confirmed for current state; Likely for the historical peers] — https://stat.ripe.net/697, https://bgp.he.net/AS697

RPKI

Not assessable — zero announced prefixes means no ROAs exist to validate [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/697

Notable usage

Associated with EASInet, IBM's late-1980s/1990s European Academic Supercomputing Initiative Network linking European research/supercomputing sites (including GMD) and the wider transatlantic academic network via CERN

[Likely] — https://www.acronymfinder.com/European-Academic-Supercomputer-Initiative-Network-(EASINET).html

Related ASNs

None confirmed as currently affiliated; legacy IRR policy references AS590 and AS690, but current corroboration is absent [Likely] — https://rest.db.ripe.net/ripe/aut-num/AS697.json

Analyst note

Dormant, orphaned legacy ASN with a documented EASInet/GMD research-network origin but no identifiable current operator. All routing sources agree on zero announcements, zero peers, zero cone.