AS786

AS786 is the live, actively-routed autonomous system operated by Jisc Services Limited for JANET, the United Kingdom's national research and education network (NREN), currently announcing roughly 211–213 IPv4 prefixes and 7 IPv6 prefixes covering close to 6.9 million IPv4 addresses.

The ASN was registered with RIPE NCC on 2002-09-18 (RDAP autnum top-level "registration" event), a date independently corroborated by bgp.tools ("registered since 18 Sep 2002"). CAIDA ranks it 1059 globally, with a customer cone of 34 ASNs, 365 prefixes, and 7,623,936 addresses, and lists 98 observed AS-degree relationships (27 customer, 69 peer, 2 provider), flagging it as a member of the observed DFZ clique.

JANET is operated by Jisc, a not-for-profit membership organisation, as a national backbone plus 18 regional networks connecting over 1,000 UK universities, colleges, research bodies, and local authorities — roughly 20 million users and about 6 petabytes of traffic per day. Jisc runs an open peering policy, welcoming any ISP to peer at LINX LON1, LINX LON2, LINX Manchester, and IXLeeds, and lists 600+ direct peerings including major cloud and content providers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Netflix, Akamai, Fastly) plus research-network peers GÉANT2 and HEAnet.

Geographically the announced space is UK-only (registrant country GB). RPKI validation was sampled against two of AS786's live announcements, 147.143.0.0/16 and 157.228.0.0/20: RIPE Routinator returned status unknown with zero validating ROAs for both, so this sample of the ~211–213 announcements shows no ROA coverage rather than confirmed validity or invalidity.

Operator

Jisc Services Limited (RIPE registrant; operating entity for the JANET Network, a service of Jisc, a not-for-profit membership organisation) [Confirmed] — rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/786, jisc.ac.uk/about-us

Country / RIR

GB, RIPE NCC [Confirmed] — rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/786, stat.ripe.net abuse-contact-finder

Allocated

2002-09-18 (RIPE RDAP autnum top-level "registration" event; corroborated independently by bgp.tools); last changed 2026-07-01 (RDAP "last changed" event) [Confirmed] — rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/786, bgp.tools/as/786

Org status

Jisc is an active not-for-profit membership organisation; Jisc Services Limited is the operating entity registered as the AS786 registrant and as signatory of the Janet peering policy [Confirmed for Jisc's not-for-profit status; Likely for the exact parent/subsidiary structure, not spelled out on the fetched pages] — jisc.ac.uk/about-us, rdap.db.ripe.net/autnum/786

Contacts

irt@jisc.ac.uk (RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder, authoritative_rir: ripe); peering requests to help@jisc.ac.uk [Confirmed] — stat.ripe.net/data/abuse-contact-finder/data.json?resource=786, jisc.ac.uk/janet/policies/peering

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-08-01 — not on Spamhaus ASN-DROP (search-based, not a direct query), no NANOG hijack/leak threads, no botnet/C2 attribution; RPKI sampled against two live announcements returns Routinator status unknown with zero validating ROAs for both (no ROA coverage found); the Dec-2015 DDoS incident was JANET being attacked, not JANET as a source [Likely] — spamhaus.org/blocklists/do-not-route-or-peer, bgp.he.net/AS786, theregister.com/2015/12/07/janet_under_persistent_ddos_attack

Network & routing

Network type

National Research and Education Network (NREN) — UK academic/research backbone plus 18 regional networks, not-for-profit [Confirmed] — jisc.ac.uk/janet

Size

~211–213 IPv4 prefixes / ~6,899,712 IPv4 addresses announced; 7 IPv6 prefixes; CAIDA customer cone 34 ASNs / 365 prefixes / 7,623,936 addresses — RIPEstat routing-status, CAIDA ASRank, bgp.tools (2026-08) [Confirmed]

Routing/peering

98 CAIDA AS-degree relationships (27 customer, 69 peer, 2 provider), DFZ clique member; RIPEstat reports 93 observed RIS neighbours; open peering policy at LINX LON1, LINX LON2, LINX Manchester, and IXLeeds (help@jisc.ac.uk); named upstream/peer ASN identities not returned by the sources consulted, so a specific peers/upstreams list is Unknown [Confirmed for counts/policy; Unknown for named peers] — api.asrank.caida.org/v2/restful/asns/786, jisc.ac.uk/janet/policies/peering

RPKI

sampled against two live announcements, 147.143.0.0/16 and 157.228.0.0/20 — RIPE Routinator returns status unknown with zero validating ROAs for both; no ROA coverage found in the sample [Confirmed for the sample] — stat.ripe.net/data/rpki-validation/data.json?resource=786&prefix=147.143.0.0/16, stat.ripe.net/data/rpki-validation/data.json?resource=786&prefix=157.228.0.0/20

Notable usage

national UK R&E backbone carrying ~6PB/day for 20M+ users across 1,000+ connected organisations; 600+ direct peerings including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Netflix, Akamai, Fastly, GÉANT2, and HEAnet [Confirmed for policy page's named list; Likely for downstream-institution inferences from third-party DBs] — jisc.ac.uk/janet, jisc.ac.uk/janet/policies/peering

Analyst note

AS786 is a large, actively-routed UK NREN ASN with clean routing hygiene and no confirmed abuse signal; the one notable security event (Dec 2015 DDoS) had JANET as the victim, not the perpetrator. RPKI posture and a named peers/upstreams list were left Unknown rather than guessed, because no consulted source establishes them.