AS851

AS851 is a dormant, secondary ASN registered under ARIN to RISQ Inc. (Réseau d'informations scientifiques du Québec), Quebec's non-profit research-and-education network, and it has not been visible in the global routing table since April 8, 2014.

RISQ is a member-owned NREN cooperative serving roughly 19 Quebec universities, 48 CEGEPs, two-thirds of the province's school service centers, teaching hospitals, and research centers — an estimated 750,000 students, faculty, and staff over an owned fiber network on the order of 6,000–7,000 km. AS851 (ARIN handle RISQ-2) sits under the same ARIN org handle, RISQ-Z, as RISQ's active operational ASN AS376 ("RISQ Network") and a third ASN, AS5747.

Historically AS851 announced two IPv4 blocks — 192.77.58.0/24 (first seen 2001-11-20) and 206.126.112.0/24 (last seen 2014-04-08) — and one IPv6 block, 2620:1f:4000::/48; it currently announces zero prefixes of either family, has zero visible peers, and zero upstreams. Its CAIDA AS rank of 79,459 and singleton customer cone (itself only, 0 prefixes, 0 addresses) both reflect complete routing inactivity. ARIN RDAP status is "active" (the registration itself has not been revoked), but the ASN's registry record shows no top-level allocation-registration event — only a 2022-04-11 "last changed" event — so its original allocation date could not be recovered from the authoritative record.

RPKI posture cannot be assessed because AS851 originates nothing today, leaving no ROAs to validate. No operator-controlled source (risq.quebec or PeeringDB) documents a peering policy specifically for AS851; RISQ's only public PeeringDB network profile is filed under sibling ASN AS376, whose policy is Selective with public peering at CANIX Montreal and TorIX — that should not be assumed to apply to AS851 without a first-party statement naming it.

Exposure

AS851 currently announces no prefixes, so it presents no live routed attack surface; any exposure would run through RISQ's active network, AS376.

Routing incidents

No BGP route leaks, hijacks, or operational incidents involving AS851 found in public NANOG archives as of August 2026.

Operator standing

RISQ Inc. is a long-standing, well-regarded Canadian R&E operator (it has run the Montreal Internet Exchange, QIX, since 1995), consistent with a clean, simply-dormant secondary ASN rather than an abandoned or hijacked one.

Operator

Reseau d'Informations Scientifiques du Quebec (RISQ Inc.), a non-profit member-owned NREN serving Quebec's education, higher-education, and research sector [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/entity/RISQ-Z, https://www.risq.quebec/

Country / RIR

CA, ARIN (RDAP registrant address: 625 Rene-Levesque West, Room 300, Montreal, QC) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/851

Allocated

Unknown — ARIN RDAP autnum/851's top-level events[] array contains only a "last changed" event (2022-04-11T17:17:24-04:00); no top-level "registration" event is present. Confirmed via a full, non-truncated re-fetch performed independently by two angles. A 2019-02-28 date exists only on the nested RISQ-Z registrant-org entity (not the autnum itself) and was excluded as a decoy per extraction rules

[Confirmed absence of a top-level date] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/851

Org status

active non-profit cooperative NREN, founded 1989, owned/governed by its member universities and CEGEPs [Likely] — https://www.risq.quebec/le-risq-un-reseau-souverain-au-service-de-la-communaute-quebecoise/

Contacts

ARIN abuse-contact entity ABUSE2561-ARIN (role abuse; vCard kind: group) — org "Reseau d'informations scientifiques du Quebec", abuse@risq.qc.ca, +1-514-845-7181;ext280 (ARIN marks this POC "Unvalidated" — no confirmed response since 2023-03-10). SC166-ORG-ARIN (technical/NOC/routing; kind: group) — support@risq.quebec, +1-514-845-7181. IPADM699-ARIN (administrative; kind: group) — org "RISQ", ipadm@risq.qc.ca, +1-514-845-7181. All three are role/function mailboxes registered against org handle RISQ-Z, not individuals

[Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/851

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of an August 2026 search of AbuseIPDB, Spamhaus, Talos Intelligence, VirusTotal, or NANOG mailing-list archives for AS851; consistent with a dormant ASN under a respected R&E operator [Confirmed sourced null] — https://www.abuseipdb.com/, https://www.spamhaus.org/blocklists/spamhaus-blocklist/, https://talosintelligence.com/, https://www.virustotal.com/

Network & routing

Network type

research and education network (NREN); AS851 itself is dormant/inactive — RISQ's active operational network runs under AS376 [Confirmed] — https://www.risq.quebec/reseau/, https://www.peeringdb.com/net/5067

Size

dormant — 0 IPv4 prefixes / 0 addresses and 0 IPv6 prefixes currently announced; historically announced two IPv4 blocks (192.77.58.0/24, first seen 2001-11-20; 206.126.112.0/24, last seen 2014-04-08) and one IPv6 block, 2620:1f:4000::/48; customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 0 prefixes, 0 addresses

[Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status/announced-prefixes (resource=851), CAIDA ASRank (asn=851), https://bgp.he.net/AS851

Routing/peering

NOT currently announced — 0/327 RIS v4 peers and 0/322 RIS v6 peers see it; CAIDA shows 0 upstreams, 0 current peers; bgp.he.net records 3 historical peers (AS376, AS20940 Akamai International, +1) and states AS851 has not been visible in the global routing table since 2014-04-08 [Confirmed]. No PeeringDB net entry exists for AS851 specifically; sibling AS376 runs a Selective policy at CANIX Montreal / TorIX, which should not be assumed to extend to AS851 [Likely, unconfirmed for AS851 itself] — RIPEstat routing-status (resource=851), CAIDA ASRank (asn=851), https://bgp.he.net/AS851, https://www.peeringdb.com/net/5067

RPKI

not assessable — AS851 announces no prefixes today, so there are no ROAs to validate [Confirmed] — RIPEstat rpki-validation (resource=851)

Notable usage

RISQ serves ~19 Quebec universities, 48 CEGEPs, two-thirds of school service centers, teaching hospitals, and research centers (~750,000 users) over ~6,000–7,000 km of owned fiber; has operated the Montreal Internet Exchange (QIX) since 1995. AS851 is a secondary/legacy registration under the same org handle as active ASN AS376 [Likely] — https://www.risq.quebec/reseau/, https://www.risq.quebec/le-risq-un-reseau-souverain-au-service-de-la-communaute-quebecoise/, https://www.cira.ca/en/resources/news/state-of-internet/montreal-internet-exchange/

Related ASNs

AS376 (RISQ Network, RISQ's active/announced ASN); AS5747 (also registered under org handle RISQ-Z) [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/entity/RISQ-Z

Analyst note

AS851 is an ARIN-status-"active" but routing-dormant secondary ASN for RISQ, dark in global BGP since April 2014; its active/announced traffic runs under sibling ASN AS376, not AS851. The allocation date is genuinely absent from the autnum's top-level RDAP events, not merely undesired — do not backfill it from the nested registrant-entity date.