AS7

AS7 is a legacy low-number allocation held under RIPE by the UK's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl); the RIPE aut-num object is explicitly tagged with status LEGACY. Its lineage traces to the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment (RSRE) at Malvern — an early European TCP/IP and ARPANET research site, famously the point from which Queen Elizabeth II sent a 1976 ARPANET email — which became the Defence Research Agency in 1991, then the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) in 1995, before DERA split in June 2001 into the government laboratory Dstl and the privatised QinetiQ. The RIPE routing policy imports from and exports to AS786 (Jisc/JANET, the UK academic network), so the ASN is reached via JANET. For triage, this is a UK government/defense research allocation: low-volume and institutional, with the current org binding to Dstl (ORG-TDSA4-RIPE) and the LEGACY status being the load-bearing confirmed facts. Public origination detail is limited, and personal-contact data in the RIPE object is redacted. No notable public abuse signal was found as of June 2026.

Operator

Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl; RIPE org ORG-TDSA4-RIPE) [Confirmed] — RIPE WHOIS

Country / RIR

United Kingdom (GB); RIPE NCC (aut-num status LEGACY) [Confirmed]

Allocated

RIPE object created 2002-05-27 (database creation, not original assignment); last modified 2018-11-05; original assignment older and unknown [Confirmed for shown date; original Unknown]

Org status

active (Dstl); lineage RSRE → DRA → DERA → Dstl (+ QinetiQ) [Confirmed historically]

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-06-07; restricted government research network — bgp.he.net

Network & routing

Network type

government / defense research [Confirmed]

Size

limited public origination; prefix/address specifics unknown — RIPE/bgp.he.net (2026-06)

Routing/peering

upstream AS786 (Jisc/JANET) [Confirmed — RIPE policy]; RPKI unknown

Notable usage

held by UK Dstl; lineage RSRE (Malvern; 1976 royal ARPANET email) → DRA (1991) → DERA (1995) → Dstl + QinetiQ (2001); reached via JANET — gov.uk/government/organisations/defence-science-and-technology-laboratory

Related ASNs

UK MoD / DERA-successor space; QinetiQ as a sibling successor entity [Likely]

Analyst note

A legacy UK government/defense allocation routed via JANET (AS786); encountering it indicates UK MoD-affiliated research network space. Low-volume, institutional.