Summary

  • AS210860 remains unrouted: RIPEstat, Hurricane Electric and CIDR Report all report zero currently announced prefixes, and Hurricane Electric states the ASN has not been visible in the global routing table since 26 March 2026.
  • The RIPE aut-num object (as-name edeka_digital, org ORG-EDG14-RIPE) carries status ASSIGNED and was last modified 2021-10-27; DFINFRA exists in the RIPE Database only as role object DA9499-RIPE, an EDEKA-linked contact in Hamburg.
  • A PeeringDB-derived self-declaration still attributes ten IPv4 and one IPv6 prefix to the ASN, in direct conflict with every routing observation.
  • The third-party record is not uniform: snapshots of ORG-EDG14-RIPE variously name it EDEKA DIGITAL GmbH and EDEKA Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs GmbH, with a 13 May 2026 organisation-object modification recorded on one mirror.

The state difference: nothing has changed, and that is the finding

When a story is about a company, the natural question is what changed. For DFINFRA the honest answer is: nothing measurable, and the persistence is itself the market signal. DFINFRA is not a registered company anywhere in the RIPE Database. It is a role object — nic-hdl DA9499-RIPE, address in Hamburg, created 10 June 2021 — that serves as both administrative and technical contact for autonomous system AS210860. The aut-num object names the network "edeka_digital" and points to organisation ORG-EDG14-RIPE.

Its status is ASSIGNED, its maintainers are RIPE-NCC-END-MNT and EDDI-MNT, and its last-modified timestamp is 27 October 2021, more than four years before this writing. Every independent mirror examined agrees on those structural fields.

Against that static registry picture, the routing picture is equally static — in the opposite direction. RIPEstat's resource page for AS210860 reports, at a data point of 14 September 2026, that the system does not originate prefixes visible in RIS, is not seen in RIS as a transiting AS, and has zero prefix details.

Hurricane Electric's BGP toolkit, updated during 2026, states the ASN has not been visible in the global routing table since 26 March 2026, with zero prefixes announced, one historically originated prefix (193.21.248.0/21, attributed to EDEKA DIGITAL GmbH), zero RPKI-valid and zero RPKI-invalid originated prefixes, and a single observed peer, AS9211 (Nawork Internet Informationssysteme GmbH). CIDR Report independently classifies AS210860 as neither announcing prefixes nor appearing as a visible transit AS. IPinfo labels the ASN "Inactive" with zero prefixes.

Four observation systems, one conclusion: whatever AS210860 was registered to do, it is not currently doing it in the global routing table.

The self-declaration that will not die

The counterpoint is the PeeringDB-derived profile republished by HostDir, which still attributes to AS210860 a self-declaration of ten IPv4 prefixes and one IPv6 prefix, network type "Other", and an "Open" routing policy. PeeringDB entries are self-reported by network operators, and stale entries are a known structural weakness of interconnection directories. No source in the current evidence set shows the declaration being updated; equally, none shows it being withdrawn. It simply persists — a marketing-grade claim of ten prefixes sitting alongside a unanimous zero from every routing observer.

The divergence matters because third-party aggregators launder it. CheckIP lists the ASN as "Active" while showing no prefix counts at all; the RIPEstat widget shows a registry row reading "RESERVED" even though the mirrored aut-num status is ASSIGNED. Each of these is a presentational artefact of one database, not a routing fact, but together they create the impression of ambiguity where the observational record is, in fact, unambiguous.

A name that has itself changed

One genuine development since earlier coverage: the organisation object ORG-EDG14-RIPE is recorded by newer third-party snapshots as "EDEKA Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs GmbH" with a last-modified date of 13 May 2026, whereas older mirrors record "EDEKA DIGITAL GmbH" last modified in 2021. A third-party IPv4 transfer record dated 23 December 2025 describes a transfer from EDEKA DIGITAL GmbH to EDEKA Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs GmbH, consistent with a corporate renaming or merger within the EDEKA group.

Because direct retrieval from the authoritative RIPE Database failed in this investigation (the REST endpoint was not retrievable and the web UI is a client-side application), this article attributes the object text to independent mirrors rather than asserting verification at source. The distinction matters: the aut-num itself has not changed since 2021, but the legal entity behind the organisation handle apparently has — a reminder that registry silence on one object does not mean registry silence everywhere.

The identification of DFINFRA (DA9499-RIPE) as the admin-c and tech-c contact is complicated by RIPE's dummification policy: filtered copies of the object show DUMY-RIPE in place of the role reference, and RIPE has publicly proposed further changes to how personal data is dummified in the database. Only unfiltered mirrors show DA9499-RIPE. Readers should treat the DFINFRA linkage as well-corroborated across mirrors but not independently confirmed against the live registry.

What the gap means and what would close it

The finding is not that the network is imaginary. A German retail group legitimately holds an assigned ASN with a contact role and a historical /21. The finding is that three kinds of authority — registry identity, self-declared interconnection posture, and observed routing behaviour — point in different directions and have done so for at least six months past the last prior coverage.

The next observable conditions are concrete: an RIPEstat or RouteViews/RIS observation of announced prefixes would close the gap in one direction; a PeeringDB record edit, a route-object change, or an aut-num modification timestamp newer than 2021 would close it in the other. Until one of those occurs, the defensible statement is exactly the one the evidence supports: DFINFRA is a registry contact role for an unrouted EDEKA-linked ASN, and the "ten prefixes" claim remains an unverified self-declaration.

Sources: ip.cc, whois.ipip.net, Hurricane Electric, tool.mg, Robtex, RIPEstat, CIDR Report, IPinfo, HostDir, DCXV, tom.be, RIPE Labs, BTW directory entry.