AS6456 — ALTOPIA

Network type: hosting

AS6456 announces 1 IPv4 prefixes covering 1,024 addresses and 1 IPv6 prefixes.

About this network

Altopia Corporation of Seattle, Washington — a long-running commercial Usenet (NNTP news) service provider, operating since the mid-1990s.

What it's used for

• Serving Usenet news to paying subscribers. The AS announces a single /22 and an IPv6 /48; reverse DNS on the space resolves under alt.net, Altopia's own domain.
• The address space is service infrastructure — news servers — rather than customer access networks. Altopia's customers connect to this network from wherever their own ISP puts them.

Notable

• Altopia is one of the oldest independent Usenet providers still trading, and is known for running an uncensored, unfiltered news feed.
• The ARIN record dates to 1997, so unlike some of its neighbours in the 6400s the low AS number here does reflect an early registration.

Interesting

• Usenet providers are an unusual shape on the modern internet: a small address footprint carrying a very large amount of outbound traffic. Altopia's tiny prefix count next to its multi-peer presence is a good illustration.

This description is AI-generated, best-effort context — not authoritative, and provided without any guarantee of accuracy.

Announced prefixes

• 208.90.168.0/22
• 2620:0:cf0::/48

Upstream networks

• AS6939 Hurricane Electric LLC
• AS11404 Wave Broadband
• AS34927 iFog GmbH
• AS24482 SG.GS
• AS394256 Tech Futures Interactive Inc.
• AS3303 Swisscom (Schweiz) AG
• AS3130 RGnet OU
• AS11164 Internet2
• AS9002 RETN Limited
• AS852 TELUS Communications Inc.
• AS7575 Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet)

Adjacent networks

• AS6939 Hurricane Electric LLC
• AS11404 Wave Broadband
• AS24482 SG.GS
• AS34927 iFog GmbH
• AS394256 Tech Futures Interactive Inc.
• AS7575 Australian Academic and Research Network (AARNet)
• AS9002 RETN Limited
• AS852 TELUS Communications Inc.
• AS3130 RGnet OU
• AS3303 Swisscom (Schweiz) AG
• AS11164 Internet2

Internet exchanges

• Seattle Internet Exchange — Seattle, United States