Some time ago there was a discussion on the as112-ops mailing list regarding the number of public AS112 nodes [RFC 6304,6305] and coming up with a way to do that. Since then, and over a period of 4 months, I have come up with a rather inefficient, but fairly good picture of both.
Over that period, a script interrogated some 322000 open resolvers, asking for the TXT record of the 'nearest' responding AS112 server. It also asked for the local resolver's software version, if available. Most of that data, if there was any, is fairly well known in other circles, so I won't delve into that and instead concentrate on what AS112 nodes were present.
The script pulled-in a listing of open resolvers, listed separately in it's own line. Once that was down, it iterated through an array asking two questions by invoking the dig command:
Those well-versed in DNS server operations will recognize the first query, which assumes a BIND name server's version number will be returned, while the second query [RFC 6304] readers will know: Learn information populated through the AS112 node's txt records in an attempt to find out which AS112 node this is.
After the two queries were sent, and data received or not (possibly because of timeouts due to either the open resolver being down, or, finally being secured in some way), it was recorded into a tab-separated flat-file. This file was then imported into PostgreSQL to make various counts and sums until all the unique TXT records were isolated. This narrowed it down to 372 unique entries....far larger than that listed at this website as being officially known!
The raw results were very interesting and may make for some very good mapping data of some kind at some point. But that's another day. Some comments on the TXT data collected.
A number of sites were kind enough to actually follow RFC 6304's example of stating what the node was and who it was run by. Unfortunately they only make a narrow majority. The rest left their identities rather ambiguous. For example, one entry was simply listed as 'JAPAN'. But where? And run by whom? Another entry was provided by Afilias, which went on to state that it ran numerous DNS nodes from multiple places. Pity they didn't follow ICANN's and Verisign's example which went so far as to state a geographic locale via airport code. So the side-task of mapping AS112 nodes is made that much harder if not impossible for nodes provided by Afilias. More importantly though, this might make it trickier for DNS users and administrators to isolate and communicate to operators like Afilias which node they may encounter problems with.
Other interesting results that came out was the number of AS112 nodes in very close proximity. If the TXT records are to be believed, we have for example three AS112 nodes in Luxemburg alone, whereas for a country like the Russian Federation, there are only 2 (not that it in itself is an indicator, perhaps network connectivity in Russia to those nodes is excellent, so more than two aren't necessary). But BGP, and the humans who create BGP policies, can be strange.
An interesting side-effect of the collection arose, which is actually quite natural in the way answers to the TXT queries came back. Some data was actually returned in a different order every time, such that duplicates with that list of 372 were present. For example these two entries have had their TXT entries returned in a different order, but are essentially describing the same node:
As interesting as that was, obviously a little bit of further work in an OpenOffice spreadsheet would be needed to weed this down to an actual number and sorted.
When I embarked on this effort, I was positive that the list I was managing on public.as112.net was incomplete, and this effort pretty much confirms it. It also shows that the list is wrong, as some nodes listed aren't even there anymore - or perhaps became isolated and private - or both.
In summary, after slicing and dicing using a combination of spreadsheet software and a db-backend, 72, more or less, is the number of publicly available AS112 nodes out there. Here then is the result.
ADC - Armenian Datacom Company AS112 Instance Provided by ADC See http://as112.adc.am for more information. For details about project see http://as112.net/ Yerevan, Armenia Unicast IP: 91.103.24.12 Afilias Global Registry Services Service provided in multiple locations AS112 - The Nameservers at the End of the Universe Managed by OSS Support - Email: no.spdoss@fastweb.it, dnsmaster@fastweb.it Milano, Caracciolo FASTWEB Internal AS112 AS112 at Allo Communications, http://www.allophone.net, Scottsbluff, NE AS112 at CLSM Inc., http://www.clsm.com/, Boulder, Colorado AS112 at Solfo, Los Angeles, CA, http://www.solfo.com/ Operated from AS53582 - Contact noc@solfo.com AS112 at TIX, http://tix.or.tz/ , Dar es Salaam, Tanzania AS112 node in Cloche d'Or Luxembourg Athens, Greece Unicast IP: as112.grnet.gr ATW Internet Kft. - Budapest, Hungary Baylor College of Medicine CHAT Houston, TX Unicast IP: 192.31.88.142 changed: vlk@lcpe.uni-sofia.bg 2007042700 University of Sofia, Bulgaria NODE 1, IGP originator: 62.44.96.1 Columbus, OH - US Czestochowa, Poland Stowarzyszenie Milosnikow Internetu INDS DARS Telecom Ulyanovsk, Russia Unicast IP: 79.132.98.151 DurableDNS, LLC London, UK East-Ukrainian Network Information Center Coordinator, Donetsk, Ukraine EUNIC-IX - Donetsk Internet eXchange Unicast IP: 194.44.61.112 East-Ukrainian Network Information Center Coordinator, Donetsk, Ukraine EUNIC-IX - Donetsk Internet eXchange Unicast IP: 194.44.71.114 Exa Networks Limited, Manchester, UK Unicast IP: 82.219.4.196 Fondation RESTENA - AS2602 Local AS112 Instance - visibility restricted to AS2602 Luxembourg, LU GNC-Alfa CJSC Unicast IP: 46.19.96.18 Abovyan, Armenia Goscomb Technologies Limited London, UK Unicast IP: 77.75.109.122 Goscomb Technologies Limited London, UK Unicast IP: 77.75.109.126 Hamburg, Germany 53 40 37 N 9 59 56 E Unicast IP: 195.244.115.149 MCS Moorbek Computer Systeme GmbH Hivane Networks Paris, FR Unicast IP: 193.17.192.194 HOSTING90 systems s.r.o. Unicast IPv6: 2a03:b780:1:3::1 http://www.hosting90.cz Hostway Corporation Unicast IP: 216.139.253.62 Austin, TX, USA ICANN DNS Operations Culpeper, VA, USA ICANN DNS Operations Los Angeles, CA, USA IIX - Israel Internet Exchange - Operation of ISOC-IL Tel-Aviv, Israel Unicast IP: 192.115.210.11 Individual Network Berlin e.V. Unicast IPv4: 192.109.42.100 Unicast IPv6: 2001:67c:1400:1200::1 INEX - Internet Neutral Exchange Association Limited IXP located in Dublin, Ireland Unicast IP: 193.242.111.6 We also serve IPv6 from this node Internet Solutions, Johannesburg, South Africa IS-ZA AS112 pod Unicast IP: 196.38.225.140 InterNetX GmbH Munich, Germany Unicast IP: 62.116.130.3 IT.Gate S.p.A. IXNM, Inc. New Mexico's only Neutral IX Albuquerque, NM, USA Unicast IP: 63.170.28.250 JAPAN London, UK Long Island Fiber Exchange, Inc. LIFE: http://www.longislandfiber.com/ New York, USA Unicast IP: 65.254.0.13 AS112 Project: http://as112.net/ Madrid, Spain, ES Unicast IP: 193.149.0.196 Espanix MCS Moorbek Computer Systeme GmbH Hamburg, Germany 53 40 37 N 9 59 56 E Unicast IP: 195.244.115.149 Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Wideband Networks Pty Ltd Munich, Germany NaMeX, Nautilus Mediterranean eXchange Rome, Italy Unicast IP: 193.201.40.18 NIC.br - Sao Paulo, Brazil NIX.CZ, Neutral Internet eXchange of Czech Republic http://www.nix.cz Unicast IP: 195.47.235.16 Oita, Japan Operated by voipGATE S.A. in Leudelange, Luxembourg Osaka, JAPAN Ottawa Internet Exchange, Ottawa, Canada Palo Alto, CA, USA Perth, WA, Australia WAIA AS112 Server Phyxia Networks Brussels, Belgium, Europe Unicast IP: 195.160.166.139 Relcom-SPb St.Petersburg, Russia Unicast IP: 193.124.83.76 RIPE NCC - Amsterdam, The Netherlands ROKSON St-Petersburg, RUSSIA Stowarzyszenie Milosnikow Internetu INDS Czestochowa, Poland TopneT Telecomunicazioni ISP Milano MI, ITALY Unicast IP: 82.143.25.101 via Caldera, 21 TREX Tampere Region Exchange Oy, FINLAND Turin, Italy UA-IX - Kyiv, Ukraine Unicast IP: 209.181.247.121 Minneapolis, MN Qwest.net Unicast IPv4: 195.242.156.217 Location: London, UK Operator: as44980.net Unicast IPv6: 2001:1A08:666:202::217 Unicast IPv4: 195.242.156.218 Location: London, UK Operator: as44980.net Unicast IPv6: 2001:1A08:666:202::218 UNICASTADDR: 62.44.96.202 ASNUM: 5421 CONTACTS: 123@UCC.UNI-SOFIA.BG ORGANIZATION: SOFIA UNIVERSITY 'ST. KLIMENT OHRIDSKI' INFO: http://as112.net VeriSign Global Registry Services RFC 1918 blackhole servers Resolve the domain names in the PTR records for the unicast addresses of our blackhole name servers fra1 To contact us send email to nstld@verisign-grs.com VeriSign Global Registry Services RFC 1918 blackhole servers Resolve the domain names in the PTR records for the unicast addresses of our blackhole name servers hkg5 To contact us send email to nstld@verisign-grs.com VeriSign Global Registry Services RFC 1918 blackhole servers Resolve the domain names in the PTR records for the unicast addresses of our blackhole name servers lax2 To contact us send email to nstld@verisign-grs.com VeriSign Global Registry Services RFC 1918 blackhole servers Resolve the domain names in the PTR records for the unicast addresses of our blackhole name servers nyc3 To contact us send email to nstld@verisign-grs.com VozTelecom Sistemas Widgets, Pty Ltd KK GmbH LLC Inc Anytown, Anycountry Unicast IP: 192.0.2.4 Your.Org, Inc Unicast IP: 204.9.55.102 Chicago, IL, US
I would like to acknowledge the assistance of Duane Wessels in providing source data.