AS879

AS879 is an active, single-prefix Autonomous System registered to GONET, the Government of Ontario's IT infrastructure branch, announcing exactly one IPv4 prefix through a single upstream transit relationship today — it is a small internal government stub network, not a commercial or transit provider.

The ASN sits inside a contiguous ARIN block spanning AS857–AS885, registered as one autnum record named GONET-ASN-17 to the Government of Ontario (org handle GOVER-10, "Ministry of Government Services, Infrastructure Technology Services," Toronto). ARIN's top-level registration event for that block shows an allocated date of 1990-08-07 and a last-changed date of 2021-02-23.

Routing-wise, AS879 announces only 204.41.246.0/24 (256 IPv4 addresses) and no IPv6 space, with a singleton customer cone (itself, 1 prefix, 256 addresses) and a CAIDA AS rank of 67,700. CAIDA's AS-relationship inference shows exactly one neighbor, AS852 (TELUS Communications Inc., Canada), classified as a provider — no settlement-free peers were observed.

No ROA covers the announced prefix, so RPKI validation status is Unknown rather than invalid. The clearest first-party usage signal found is an Ontario open-data listing for a "Remote Access Service" letting authenticated government staff reach the province's internal network; the dataset does not name GONET or AS879 directly and the underlying data itself is marked unavailable pending review, so the link is an inference, not a confirmed match. No dedicated GONET-branded operator website or published peering policy was located, and PeeringDB has no record for this ASN (404 on both API and web UI).

Operator

GONET — ARIN organization "GONET" (org id GOVER-10), the IT/network-infrastructure branch of the Government of Ontario; address of record still reads "Ministry of Government Services" though the ministry was renamed "Ministry of Public and Business Service Delivery and Procurement" in June 2024 [Confirmed for org identity; Likely for current legal name] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/entity/GOVER-10, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Public_and_Business_Service_Delivery_and_Procurement

Country / RIR

CA, ARIN [Confirmed] — ARIN RDAP autnum record (registrant address Toronto, ON)

Allocated

1990-08-07 (ARIN RDAP top-level registration event on the AS857–AS885 block record, handle AS857, name GONET-ASN-17); last changed 2021-02-23 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/879

Org status

active — ARIN RDAP status for the AS857–AS885 block (GONET-ASN-17) is Active; the GOVER-10 org entity was registered 2007-09-24 and last changed 2024-07-29 [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/879, https://rdap.arin.net/registry/entity/GOVER-10

Contacts

CSOC@ontario.ca (CSB8-ARIN, Cyber Security Branch, roles technical/routing/noc/abuse; ARIN records no response from this POC since 2023-11-07); ARIN org record GOVER-10 lists address of record "Ministry of Government Services, Infrastructure Technology Services, 222 Jarvis St., 6th Floor, Toronto, ON M7A 0B6, Canada"

[Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/879, https://rdap.arin.net/registry/entity/GOVER-10

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable public abuse signal found as of 2026-08-09 — CleanTalk shows 0 detected IPs / 0.00% spam rate; Qrator Radar reports no route leaks, hijacks, bogons, loops, or vulnerable ports; Spamhaus DROP/EDROP membership could not be directly queried and is Unknown; no NANOG thread naming AS879 was found

Network & routing

Network type

government/enterprise internal network — non-commercial ASN belonging to the Government of Ontario's provincial IT infrastructure branch, not a public transit/access ISP [Confirmed] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/879

Size

1 IPv4 prefix announced (204.41.246.0/24, 256 addresses), 0 IPv6 prefixes; customer cone = 1 ASN (itself), 1 prefix, 256 addresses [Confirmed] — RIPEstat routing-status / CAIDA ASRank (2026-08)

Routing/peering

single upstream/provider, AS852 TELUS Communications Inc. (Canada), per CAIDA AS-relationship inference (degree: provider 1, customer 0, peer 0); bgp.he.net's neighbor table lists the same AS852 but does not distinguish transit from peering in its UI [Confirmed for CAIDA classification; Likely for provider vs. peer distinction] — https://api.asrank.caida.org/v2/restful/asns/879, https://bgp.he.net/AS879

RPKI

no ROA found for 204.41.246.0/24; RPKI validation status Unknown (routinator via RIPEstat); bgp.he.net corroborates 0 RPKI-valid and 0 RPKI-invalid origins [Confirmed] — https://stat.ripe.net/AS879, https://bgp.he.net/AS879

Notable usage

best available first-party signal is an Ontario open-data catalog entry for a "Remote Access Service" giving authenticated government staff access to the province's internal government network, administered by the Treasury Board Secretariat; the entry does not explicitly name GONET or AS879 and the dataset is itself marked unavailable pending review (last validated 2016-08-03)

[Unknown — inferred link only] — https://data.ontario.ca/dataset/access-to-the-internal-government-network

Related ASNs

AS879 is one ASN within a contiguous ARIN block AS857–AS885, a single autnum record ("GONET-ASN-17") registered to the same Government of Ontario org; no separate "active operational ASN" analogous to a Merit/AS237-style split was identified

[Confirmed for block structure] — https://rdap.arin.net/registry/autnum/879

Analyst note

government-internal stub ASN inside a larger Ontario block; no PeeringDB record (404), no dedicated operator website, and no published peering policy were found — these are sourced absences, not gaps in searching. Live routing is minimal and single-homed through AS852 (TELUS).