Alibaba Cloud Computing — 3 prefixes (MA-L)

A MAC address beginning with D8:96:E0, FC:A6:4C, or 18:82:19 belongs to Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd., the cloud-computing subsidiary of Alibaba Group, and is most likely seen on a virtual network interface tied to a workload running inside Alibaba Cloud's Elastic Compute Service (ECS) infrastructure.

Alibaba Cloud (branded "Aliyun") was founded in September 2009 and is headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China, with an international headquarters in Singapore. It operates in 29+ regions and 87+ availability zones and is ranked by Gartner as the largest IaaS cloud provider in China and Asia-Pacific, offering elastic compute, storage, database, networking, CDN, and DDoS-protection services.

The repo's IEEE registry mirror carries three separate MA-L (/24) assignments for this org: D8:96:E0 and 18:82:19 both register to "Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd." at the same Yuhang District, Hangzhou address, while FC:A6:4C registers to a slightly different legal-name spelling ("Alibaba cloud computing Co., Ltd") at a Xihu District, Hangzhou address. All three share the same corporate group and country (China).

Because MAC addresses operate only at the link layer, one of these prefixes would typically be observed only by a device running as an Alibaba Cloud ECS instance (seeing its own virtual NIC) or by equipment directly L2-adjacent to Alibaba Cloud infrastructure — not by general internet traffic, which is attributed by IP/ASN rather than OUI. No security research, honeypot log, or abuse report was found citing these specific prefixes by name.

IEEE assignment

3 prefixes → Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd. / "Alibaba cloud computing Co., Ltd", registered Hangzhou, Zhejiang, CN [Confirmed] — the IEEE MA-L registry, 16710, 27173

Registry / block size

MA-L (24-bit OUI) for all three entries [Confirmed] — the IEEE MA-L registry

HQ / country

Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China (registry addresses); Alibaba Cloud's international HQ is Singapore [Confirmed] — the IEEE MA-L registry; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Cloud

Company status

active — large hyperscale cloud provider [Confirmed] — alibabacloud.com; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Cloud

Device types

Elastic Compute Service (ECS) virtual network interfaces / Elastic Network Interfaces (ENI) [Likely] — alibabacloud.com/help/en/ecs/user-guide/eni-overview (inference from product architecture; no source names these specific OUI blocks)

Notable products

Alibaba Cloud ECS (compute), object storage, database-as-a-service, CDN/DDoS protection, networking [Confirmed] — alibabacloud.com

Verified sample prefixes (all MA-L)

D8:96:E0 (Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd., Yuhang District, Hangzhou), 18:82:19 (Alibaba Cloud Computing Ltd., same address as D8:96:E0), FC:A6:4C (Alibaba cloud computing Co., Ltd, Xihu District, Hangzhou) [Confirmed] — the IEEE MA-L registry, 27173, 16710

Registration date

not published — IEEE's public OUI data (Registry, Assignment, Organization Name, Organization Address only) carries no assignment/registration date; third-party dates seen on maclookup.app (e.g. D8:96:E0 "27 May 2014", FC:A6:4C "22 June 2021") are database-scrape artifacts, not IEEE facts [Unknown per IEEE; third-party dates not attributed] — maclookup.app/search/result?mac=D8-96-E0, maclookup.app/search/result?mac=FC-A6-4C

Special note

A separate, distinct MA-M registration (4C:91:7A:C0/28) exists for "Alibaba (Beijing) Software Service Inc." — not part of this vendor entry's three MA-L blocks and not consolidated here [Confirmed] — the IEEE MA-L registry

Related vendors

Alibaba Group (parent company); Alibaba (Beijing) Software Service Inc. (separate MA-M registrant, same corporate family)

Analyst note

This is a substantive, identifiable hyperscale cloud company with multiple OUI assignments — not a bare single-OUI shell registration — but no source ties these prefixes to a specific device category with certainty; device-type attribution stays [Likely], and no OUI-specific security/abuse data exists in public sources, an expected null given MAC addresses do not traverse the public internet.