AS840

AS840 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 announces zero IPv4 and zero IPv6 prefixes today, with zero visible BGP peers on every routing source checked — a fully unrouted ASN.

AS840 has no standalone ARIN record; it is one of five ASNs (AS838 through AS842) sharing a single legacy block registration named CANET2-ASN, all tied to the same Toronto registrant. The registrant's name and University of Toronto address align with CA*net, Canada's first national research-and-education network, though no source directly documents AS840 itself as an operational part of that project.

Every routing source checked — RIPEstat, Hurricane Electric's bgp.he.net, bgp.tools, and ipinfo.io — agrees on zero announced prefixes and zero observed peers as of an August 2026 check. ARIN's RDAP record still lists the block as formally active, but the sole listed contact (Bell Global Network Operations) has been flagged unresponsive by ARIN since 2010, and the registrant's implied domain, canet.ca, no longer resolves.

No registration date is recorded in ARIN's RDAP top-level events for this block — only a single "last changed" entry from 2003-07-14 exists; a third-party aggregator's displayed "1970" allocation date is a Unix-epoch placeholder, not a real registry fact. The registrant should not be confused with the similarly named Canadian Research Knowledge Network, and any link to CANARIE Inc.'s current, separately registered AS6509 is unconfirmed.

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 840, ARIN RDAP entity CRN-6

Country / RIR

CA, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum 840; RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder (authoritative_rir: arin); CAIDA country.iso=CA

Allocated

no distinct registration event recorded — the RDAP autnum top-level events[] array carries exactly one event, "last changed" 2003-07-14, confirmed not truncated; no separate "registration" event exists in the record. A third-party aggregator's displayed "January 1, 1970" allocation date is a Unix-epoch placeholder artifact and does not correspond to any ARIN-reported date

[Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum 840, ipinfo.io/AS840

Org status

split picture — ARIN RDAP formally lists status "active" for the covering block (not revoked or reassigned), but every operational signal shows dormancy: 0 announced prefixes, 0 peers, no PeeringDB presence, and a dead registrant domain; ARIN's own record flags its listed point of contact as unresponsive since 2010-06-09. Whether "Canadian Research Network" still exists as a going concern was not independently verified against a corporate registry [Confirmed for RDAP status; Unknown for current organizational existence] — ARIN RDAP autnum 840, ARIN RDAP entity CA-NOC-ARIN

Contacts

noc@canet.ca (RDAP POC handle CA-NOC-ARIN, org "Bell Global Network Operations") — 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; AbuseIPDB, the Spamhaus ASN lookup, and Talos Reputation Center returned HTTP 403 to direct checks (coverage gaps, not confirmed-clean); MARC's NANOG archive returned an explicit no-hits result. CleanTalk's listing misattributes the ASN to the U.S. DoD Network Information Center — contradicted by five independent sources and excluded here as a data error

Network & routing

Network type

dormant today — 0 IPv4 and 0 IPv6 announced prefixes, 0 BGP peers on every source checked; the registrant's name and University of Toronto address align with CA*net, Canada's first national research-and-education backbone, though no source directly documents AS840 itself as operational within that project [Confirmed for dormancy; Likely for R&E lineage] — RIPEstat, bgp.he.net, bgp.tools, canarie.ca/a-birthday-for-canadas-internet

Size

dormant — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 IPv4 addresses and 0 IPv6 prefixes currently announced; customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses; CAIDA AS rank 79,459. CAIDA records seen: false for this ASN, so 79,459 is its tail sentinel for an ASN it has never observed — that corroborates the dormancy rather than contradicting the zero cone

[Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / CAIDA AS Rank / bgp.he.net / bgp.tools (2026-08-08)

Routing/peering

NOT announced — 0 of 327 total RIS peers observing this ASN (v4) and 0 of 322 (v6); CAIDA degree total 0 (customer 0, peer 0, provider 0); no upstreams or peers visible on bgp.he.net or bgp.tools; no PeeringDB record exists (404); no published peering policy found

[Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status, CAIDA ASRank

RPKI

not assessable — AS840 announces no prefixes, so there are no ROAs to validate; RIPEstat's rpki-validation check was explicitly skipped for this reason (announced_prefix_count: 0) [Confirmed] — stat.ripe.net rpki-validation

Notable usage

none current — the ASN is dormant. A plausible but unconfirmed historical connection exists to CA*net, Canada's first national R&E Internet backbone (University of Toronto, IBM Canada, and carrier INSINC involved per CANARIE's own published history), inferred from the registrant's name and address; no source documents AS840 specifically as used for that project

[Likely] — canarie.ca/a-birthday-for-canadas-internet

Related ASNs

AS840 belongs to a 5-number ASN block (AS838–AS842) registered together under ARIN org handle CRN-6 [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum 840. Separately, AS6509 is CANARIE Inc.'s current, actively-routed ASN (~1,168 announced prefixes) with a published Selective PeeringDB policy; CANARIE is commonly described as an operational successor to Canada's original CA*net effort, but no source found in this research confirms Canadian Research Network (CRN-6) is legally the same entity as, or was formally succeeded by, CANARIE Inc. — do not conflate them or attribute AS6509's peering policy or traffic to AS840 [Confirmed for AS6509's own status; Unknown for any legal succession link] — peeringdb.com/asn/6509, ipinfo.io/AS6509, canarie.ca

Analyst note

Encountered as a dormant legacy ASN inside the same five-number ARIN block as AS838 (AS838–AS842), registered to Canadian Research Network. No live operator website, no announced routes, no PeeringDB presence, and a stale/unresponsive abuse contact. A plausible but unconfirmed historical link exists to CA*net; do not conflate the registrant with the similarly-named Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN, an unrelated library/journal consortium), and do not attribute CANARIE Inc.'s active AS6509 — its peering policy and traffic — to AS840.