My own ASN, IPv6 only
When you do DevSecOps for a living, you spend your days configuring networks for other people. At some point, you end up building one for yourself.
Why a personal ASN?
An autonomous system means you can announce your own prefixes to the whole world, choose your peers, and stop depending on a single hoster’s offering. It’s also the perfect playground to learn BGP for real — routers don’t lie.
In July 2024, I registered mine with the RIPE NCC:
- ASN:
AS214587 - as-name:
Rulx-Philome-Alexis - Organisation:
ORG-RA1164-RIPE - RIR: RIPE NCC (Luxembourg), sponsored by LXC Luxembourg
IPv6 only — and proud of it
The allocation is a 2a13:7fc0:1010::/44. Two /48s are announced over BGP:
| Prefix | Purpose |
|---|---|
2a13:7fc0:1010::/48 | Network infrastructure & services |
2a13:7fc0:101f::/48 | Experiments & lab |
No IPv4. Every machine has its own global, routable address, end to end. It’s demanding (no NAT to hide behind), but it’s exactly the kind of practice I want.
Transit: route64.org and Vultr
The network relies on two connections:
- AS212895 (route64.org) — non-commercial IPv6 transit, handy and well regarded by small personal and educational networks.
- AS20473 (The Constant Company / Vultr) — IPv6 transit and a presence point at a classic hoster.
With two distinct paths, the network survives even if one of them goes down.
What’s next?
The medium-term goal is the edge datacenter: colocated hardware, direct peering with internet exchanges, services that truly live on my network (resolver, time, mirrors, tools). Step by step — but the hardest part is done: the network exists, it’s announced, and it answers over IPv6.
Written by Rulx Philomé Alexis · ← All notes