Summary

  • A registry view of AS37968, pinned to 2026-11-09T16:00:00 UTC, names CNIXP ShenZhen QianHai New-Type Internet Exchange Point Co.,Ltd as holder, places the number in block 37888–38911 "Assigned by APNIC", and reports announced=false.
  • The community database page for the same ASN carries 100G at CNIX (Qianhai, Shenzhen) and 100M at AMS-IX Hong Kong, with "Operational" against both — fields its users typed in, not capacity we measured.
  • BTW's own card records a private company, one evidence reference and a jurisdiction that reads "Global", and lists registration country, current services, assets, ownership links and named leadership as unverified.
  • A buyer can check a port figure and a counterparty name today. Who runs the switching floor, sets admission and price, and answers at three in the morning is still an open question, and it is answerable only on paper this file does not contain.

Three records, three different questions

The RIPEstat as-overview for AS37968 identifies who holds a number. The PeeringDB page for the same ASN records where that number claims to be present. BTW's directory card Only for Strategic Circle lists what this publication thinks it knows, and more usefully, what it does not. All three were read within a quarter of an hour of each other on 10 November 2026, and none of them touches the other two.

That gap is the story.

The registry row

The as-overview came back with a query window whose start and end are the same instant: 2026-11-09T16:00:00. Inside it: resource 37968; block 37888–38911, described as "Assigned by APNIC" within the IANA 16-bit Autonomous System Numbers Registry; and a holder string spelled exactly "CNIXP - ShenZhen QianHai New-Type Internet Exchange Point Co.,Ltd". The same record reports announced=false.

Read that precisely. A holder is a delegated name attached to a number, and delegation is an administrative act. It is not a routing announcement and it is not a port. announced=false says that at one instant one service observed no prefixes originating from that ASN. Single-instant absence is exactly as strong as the instant: it does not establish that nothing runs, and it says nothing whatever about a switching fabric. What the row does establish is narrower and still worth having — the number sits in a block a regional registry administers, and the name on it is the exchange company's own name rather than a carrier's.

The self-reported port list

The PeeringDB page is titled "AS37968 - CNIX (Qianhai, Shenzhen) - PeeringDB". The retained fragment sets out two facilities in order: CNIX (Qianhai, Shenzhen) with 100G and Operational, then AMS-IX Hong Kong with 100M and Operational. Both are entries in a community database that networks populate themselves. Capacity is as recorded. "Operational" is a status value in that database, not a service-level measurement, and nobody audited the ports behind it.

The asymmetry is nonetheless the most concrete thing in the file. At the exchange carrying its own name in the page title, the record shows 100G. In Hong Kong it shows 100M, a tenth of that. A tenth is what an operator buys to test a market, not to serve one. Either the Shenzhen fabric is the business and Hong Kong is a foothold, or the two figures describe two different things at two different moments — and the record cannot tell you which.

What the card admits

BTW's projection, last updated 17 June 2026 and read at 00:44 UTC on 10 November, records legal_type as private_company, with a legal_name identical to the recorded name. Its hq_country and registration_jurisdiction fields both read "Global": a placeholder where a jurisdiction should be, not a jurisdiction. Region reads the same. Services are managed_network and peering_ixp with the role provider. One evidence reference is attached — the RIPEstat URL above — at confidence 0.7. No website. No leadership contacts. Empty relationship arrays.

The card's own data gaps name the legal entity country, current services, visible assets, parent or subsidiary links, and responsible public leadership contacts as unverified, and its status is published_object_card.

Worth saying plainly what the name is and is not. "New-Type Internet Exchange Point" forms part of the company's English name as rendered in two public records. A name is a name. Nothing in either record is a designation instrument, and treating the phrase as a policy finding would be inventing evidence rather than reading it.

The conditional test

If this vehicle operates the fabric, six things should be producible on request: a port inventory with its cross-connect schedule, the route-server policy, the admission criteria, the price list, the escalation path when a session drops, and the name of the party empowered to refuse a member. If it instead fronts capacity that somebody else switches, those six answers live with the partner, and the signature on the contract and the hand on the switch sit in different buildings.

A buyer can compress that to four verbs. Who can refuse? Who can replace? Who can impose? Who answers? Each is a document or a site visit, never a press release.

That is the practical stake, and it is not a technicality. An operator sizing a Shenzhen point of presence holds, today, a port figure at a named exchange and a counterparty name spelled identically in a registry and a directory card. It does not hold the route-server policy at that fabric, the admission rule, the price, or a named human. An investor holds a private-company label whose registration jurisdiction reads "Global" and whose only cited evidence is a registry lookup. Both are being invited to read an exchange footprint as an exchange business.

Dates matter more than file size here. Two separate records agree on the holder string and the ASN. One was last touched five months ago; the other is pinned to a single second of 9 November. Neither is stale enough to dismiss, and neither is fresh enough to underwrite a commitment.

So the file proves delegation and a claimed presence at two exchanges, one at a tenth the recorded capacity of the other. It does not prove who switches those ports, who sets the price of a cross-connect inside the Qianhai facility, or which company takes the call when the fabric fails. The control question stays open, and it closes with a document, not with another database field.