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 ARIN RDAP status is "active" (the registration itself has not been revoked), but the ASN's registry record shows no top-level allocation-registration event — only a 2022-04-11 "last changed" event — so its original allocation date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.

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.