AS838

AS838 (CANET2-ASN) is a dormant legacy autonomous system registered under ARIN to the "Canadian Research Network" (org handle CRN-6), based at the University of Toronto's McLennan Labs. It last originated routes in September 2005 and today announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes with zero visible BGP peers — a fully unrouted ASN.

The registration traces to CA*net, Canada's first coast-to-coast national research-and-education Internet backbone. Following a 1989 decision to move to TCP/IP, the University of Toronto won the build competition with IBM Canada and carrier INSINC contributing, launching service at 56 Kbps. CA*net wound down in 1997 once commercial networks could meet members' commodity Internet needs, with Bell Advanced Communications Inc. absorbing former CA*net transit customers.

RIPEstat records a genuine historical origination episode: first seen announcing 206.172.213.0/24 in August 2000, last seen announcing 199.247.226.0/24 in September 2005, after which no RIS peer has observed the ASN again. CAIDA ranks it 79,459 globally with a singleton customer cone (0 prefixes, 0 addresses), and no PeeringDB record exists for AS838.

AS838 should not be conflated with CANARIE Inc., the historically related nonprofit formed in 1992–1993 that now operates Canada's active research network. CANARIE's current, separate registration is AS6509, which publishes its own Selective PeeringDB policy — that policy, and any current traffic, belongs to AS6509, not to AS838.

RPKI validation does not apply, since no prefixes are announced to check against a ROA. The registrant's listed domain, canet.ca, no longer resolves; the only surviving trace is a 1997 Wayback Machine capture of the CA*net homepage. ARIN's RDAP record still lists formal status "active," but flags its own listed contact as unresponsive since 2010.

Operator

"Canadian Research Network" (ARIN org handle CRN-6; registered address 255 Huron Street, Room 350, McLennan Labs, Toronto, ON M5S 3J1 — a University of Toronto building) [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum 838, ARIN RDAP entity CRN-6

Country / RIR

CA, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum 838

Allocated

no distinct registration event recorded — the RDAP autnum top-level events[] array carries exactly one event, "last changed" 2003-07-14 (verified genuine via a live byte-identical re-fetch, not a truncation artifact); no separate "registration" event exists in the record

[Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum 838

Org status

split picture — ARIN RDAP formally lists status "active" (not revoked or reassigned), but every operational signal shows dormancy: 0 announced prefixes, 0 peers since 2005, no PeeringDB presence, and a dead registrant domain; ARIN's own record flags its listed point of contact as unresponsive since 2010-06-09

[Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum 838, ARIN RDAP entity CA-NOC-ARIN

Contacts

noc@canet.ca (RDAP POC handle CA-NOC-ARIN, org "Bell Global Network Operations"; vCard kind: group, non-individual) — flagged by ARIN as unresponsive since 2010-06-09; the canet.ca domain does not resolve as of this check [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP entity CA-NOC-ARIN, RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of an August 2026 search — not in Spamhaus, Talos Reputation Center, AbuseIPDB, VirusTotal, or NANOG mailing-list archives (MARC search: no hits); consistent with a fully unrouted ASN

Network & routing

Network type

national research-and-education (R&E) network backbone; legacy and fully inactive today — tied to CA*net, Canada's first coast-to-coast Internet backbone project [Confirmed] — canarie.ca/a-birthday-for-canadas-internet, ARIN RDAP

Size

dormant — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 IPv4 addresses and 0 IPv6 prefixes currently announced; customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / CAIDA AS Rank / bgp.he.net (2026-08)

Routing/peering

NOT announced today — 0 RIS peers observing it, CAIDA degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0), no PeeringDB record (404) [Confirmed]. Historically routed 2000-08-18 through 2005-09-22 (first-seen 206.172.213.0/24, last-seen 199.247.226.0/24) [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status

RPKI

not assessable — AS838 announces no prefixes, so there are no ROAs to validate; RIPEstat's rpki-validation endpoint requires an announced prefix and none exists [Confirmed] — stat.ripe.net rpki-validation

Notable usage

AS838 is tied to CA*net, Canada's first national R&E Internet backbone; the University of Toronto won the 1989 build competition (with IBM Canada and carrier INSINC contributing), launched service at 56 Kbps, and wound the network down in 1997 as commercial networks matured, with Bell Advanced Communications Inc. absorbing former CA*net transit clients

[Confirmed] — canarie.ca/a-birthday-for-canadas-internet, Wayback Machine capture of canet.ca (1997-04-14)

Related ASNs

AS838 belongs to a 5-number ASN block (AS838–AS842) registered together under ARIN org handle CRN-6 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum 838. Separately, AS6509 is CANARIE Inc.'s current, actively-routed ASN with a published Selective PeeringDB policy — historically linked through CA*net's lineage but a distinct registration from AS838; do not conflate

[Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/asn/6509

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant legacy ASN tied to Canada's first national R&E backbone (CA*net, wound down in 1997). RDAP resolves to "Canadian Research Network" (CRN-6), but the historically-related, currently active operator CANARIE Inc. runs a separate ASN, AS6509 — its peering policy and current traffic must not be attributed to AS838.