Speaking of network information, including internet protocols or IP addresses, is one of the important parts of the Internet. Similarly, ASN is a related term in this regard that you must know if you wish to expand the networking horizons of your business. As IP addresses and internet-connected devices proliferate these days due to cyber vulnerabilities, provisions such as ASN have become more important than ever. To handle the enormous amount of everyday data communications on the Internet, regulatory groups like the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and others have transitioned from the previous system, IPv4, to IPv6. This system has the added numerical capacity to manage the growing demands. That said, ASN is a way to regulate such surplus communication data occurring through a great number of nodes, including IP addresses and internet devices. So, let’s find out what exactly ASN is and how it can help your business.
What is an ASN?
An Autonomous System (AS) is a group of several IP networks possessing their separate route policy. So, if these autonomous systems are to interact with each other, they need a unique number or identifier. An Autonomous System Number (ASN) is a unique number that is available globally, allowing its associated autonomous systems to exchange routing data with other connected systems. An ASN can be private or public. While a public ASN is needed when systems exchange data on the Internet, a private ASN must communicate with only one provider through Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). The IANA assigns these ASNs to the autonomous systems through Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), the organization responsible for managing internet numbers in a specific region of the globe. There are five RIRs:
Asia-Pacific Network Information Center (APNIC) African Network Information Center (AFRINIC) American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) Latin American and Caribbean Network Information Center (LACNIC) Réseaux IP Européens Network Center (RIPE NCC)
How Do ASNs Help?
If your business needs to contact the outer world in a secure environment, you can do it through individual nodes or several workstations on the Internet. This way, you can get your resources together, combine the systems, and then give an IP address to each workstation. You can request ASN from the concerned authority based on your region and use it to establish one gateway point. ASNs can provide your business with different end nodes for sending and receiving information via the Internet. You can get a bunch of several end-user lines or nodes that are connected to a single central gateway. Let’s find out some of the ways an ASN can benefit your business:
Increase the flexibility of your network Using your own ASN and IP address promotes the portability of IP addresses. It facilitates direct peering with different Internet Exchange points (IXP) Better traffic control You can get your network identity, both externally and internally. You can establish your own BGP using a public ASN.
Next, let’s discuss some of the best ASN online lookups, scripts, and APIs. The primary goal of these tools is to check the ASNs to fetch the complete AS information.
UltraDNS
Getting information about an ASN is super easy with UltraDNS. You just have to enter an AS number, company name, or IP address and then hit “Go”. It will display the full information you need about the specific IP address’s ASN, including the IP owner, issuing registrar, registration data, its maximum range against total IPs, and so on.
APNIC Whois Search
APNIc’s Whois database maintains all the data about organizations holding ASN and IP addresses in this region. So, using APNIC Whois Search, you can determine the ASN and IP address of an organization. This database also showcases when and where the resources were distributed, along with the contact information for each network. Just click on “Search APNIC Whois.” It will direct you to another page where you can enter the IP address you want to search for to determine the information.
ASNLookup
ASNLookup offers a user-friendly interface to find the IP addresses of an organization by leveraging ASNs. To get the data, just enter the name of the organization. ASNLookup also offers an API endpoint for free that you can use to retrieve data in JSON format. This is useful if you want to integrate it with an application or tool. For example, we have entered ‘Salesforce’ as the input, so it displays the following output. You can even download the results and store them for your reference.
MX Toolbox
To fetch ASN information, MX Toolbox takes AS name or AS number as input. Upon entering a partial AS input, it will show all the AS numbers matching the partial name. So, you can enter an IP address, hostname, or domain name to get the ASN information. If you enter a link, it will direct you to relevant data or tools. You can also view a chronological result history.
Hacker Target
Check the ASN for an IP address to fetch information about a specific AS using Hacker Target. Just enter the ASN or IP address of an organization as input, and it will return matching ASNs separated with a comma. It will display the organization’s name, its geographic location, and all the related IP addresses. Using Hacker Target’s lookup tool, you can check the owner of a specific IP address in no time. However, there’s a catch that you must not overlook for organizations with their AS located across different continents. So, if you get an IP address of an AS showing in the US, it does not always mean that the system is located physically with the US. This tool is built for ad-hoc lookups. If you use its free version, you can check 100 results per day. It requires no keys or signups.
IPtoASN
IPtoASN is another online lookup with a pretty straightforward way to find the ASN belonging to an organization. Just enter IPv6 or IPv6 address and hit “Lookup”. Programming languages like Go and Rust power the platform of IPtoASN. The operating system OpenBSD, with advanced security technology, also drives IPtoASN to safeguard your firewalls in a distributed atmosphere.
IPWHOIS
IPWHOIS lets you retrieve and then parse whois information for IPv6 and IPv4 addresses. Using this script, you can find ASN, website name, or IP address. It is a Python-based package for parsing and retrieving data. It can parse a wide range of fields into one standard dictionary. It supports RDAP queries, legacy protocols, full CLI, and optional ANSI-colored console output.
IPinfo
Are you tired of command-based solutions and still want ASN data? It’s possible, fortunately! Get all the ASN information available at your fingertips by using this amazing API – IPinfo. Just enter an ASN or IP address and get the results in seconds. The API returns the outputs in JSON format with information for both IPv6 and IPv4 prefixes. This information includes IDs, names, netblocks, countries, ISPs, or Internet Service Providers. By obtaining such data, you can get insights about the internet connection, data limitations, and speed of your visitors. You can also check whether a specific IP address is of a business, hosting provider, or consumer. Gather all this information to plan how you can enhance the experience of your users. IP info is reliable as it provides precise results and updates its network datasets daily.
Conclusion
A secure network is the need of the hour. With the above information on various online lookups, scripts, and APIs, you can collect real-time ASN data to establish a better business network around the globe in a fully secure environment and simultaneously improve your visitor’s experience on your website.
