Summary

  • ARIN's transfer file records the entire 155.68.0.0/16, 65,536 IPv4 addresses, moving from Franklin and Marshall College to Modal Labs, Inc. on 20 October 2026. The source registration date in that row is 30 October 1991.
  • Current ARIN RDAP assigns exactly the same start and end addresses to Modal Labs. Its registration event matches the transfer timestamp; its last-change event follows on 21 October. The public records identify the transfer, not its price or what either party will do with the block.

The college lost a whole /16 in one registry line. ARIN's cumulative transfer file puts 155.068.000.000 through 155.068.255.255 in both the original and transferred sets. Franklin and Marshall College is the source, Modal Labs, Inc. the recipient, and 20 October 2026 at 12:53:22 UTC the transfer date. ARIN is the source and receiving registry. There is no interregional handoff to explain away the scale: this is one complete 65,536-address block changing the name on ARIN's book.

A /16 is easy to say and hard to replace. Its address range starts at 155.68.0.0 and ends at 155.68.255.255; inclusive arithmetic yields 65,536 IPv4 addresses. The transfer row repeats those exact boundaries under original_set and transfer_set. This was not a /24 shaved from an old campus allocation. Nor does the file describe a staged sale of scattered fragments. It describes the whole /16 at once. That distinction is the story. A registry designed to record technical uniqueness now also records a single decision that moves an address block the size of 256 /24s from an educational institution to a company.

The row's source_registration_date is 30 October 1991. That timestamp places the source registration in an earlier Internet era; it does not supply a day-by-day history of the college's use, route announcements or ownership claims. The transfer date is 20 October 2026, ten days before the source registration date's thirty-fifth calendar anniversary. The near-anniversary makes a good headline; the precise registry fact is simpler. A source date from 1991 and a transfer in 2026 appear in the same public record. Old allocations can be moved in a single present-day transaction.

ARIN's current RDAP response gives the same start and end addresses. It labels the network ML-1515, names registrant entity ML-1515 as Modal Labs, Inc., and dates registration to 20 October at 08:53:22 Eastern daylight time: exactly 12:53:22 UTC. A last-change event follows on 21 October at 10:15:28 Eastern. The public transfer row and the current registration agree on both the boundaries and the transaction clock. That is a stronger cross-check than a company announcement. It tells readers who the bookkeeper currently recognizes for the block.

ARIN's transfer guidance explains that resource transfers require policy approval and that recipients must qualify under its rules. Its published transfer requirements put a /24 floor on specified-recipient transfers and describe need-based qualification for larger blocks. Those rules give the institution a formal role: ARIN does more than copy a private contract into a spreadsheet. Yet the public transfer row has no consideration, negotiation history, valuation, or purpose field. A tidy registry entry is not a public account of the bargain behind it.

The difference matters because a 1991 registration date can easily be turned into a sentimental ownership story, while a 2026 transfer can easily be turned into a market triumph. Neither reading is in the file. It records a source, a recipient, a range and a date. It does not say whether the college renumbered any systems, whether the recipient has announced the block on the global routing table, or whether the parties paid a particular amount. A dated network-change record or a disclosed transaction document would change that assessment. Until then the registry can answer the narrow question precisely: whose name is on this /16 now?

The address keeper's power sits in that narrow answer. ARIN did not need to explain the economics for the transfer to become the operative public registration. The college's name moves to history; Modal Labs' name occupies the live record. For 65,536 addresses, the mechanism is remarkably compact. One line announces the departure, and a second registry view makes the arrival durable. The real question for institutions sitting on old blocks is whether their address strategy is a conscious choice or merely an ancient row waiting for someone else to make one.