Summary

  • The RIPE role object DFINFRA (nic-hdl DA9499-RIPE) remains the registered administrative and technical contact for AS210860, an autonomous system that Hurricane Electric reports has not been visible in the global routing table since 26 March 2026, with zero announced prefixes and a single observed peer. https://bgp.he.net/AS210860
  • A PeeringDB-derived record still self-declares ten IPv4 prefixes, one IPv6 prefix and an open peering policy for the same network, directly contradicting every independent routing observation in the retained evidence. https://hostdir.net/networks/as210860-edeka-digital
  • The registry record itself is old: the role object has not been modified since 27 October 2021, and the aut-num object was created on 24 August 2021 — yet commercial-register and org-object signals around the same namespace have changed as recently as May 2026. https://ip.cc/topic/asn/AS210860/
  • Public data providers disagree with each other about the same network's status: one labels it Inactive, another lists it Active with a registration date of 2025-03-25, and mirrors of the same RPSL objects carry different organisation names and different peer lists. https://ipinfo.io/AS210860
  • The unresolved question is not identity but verification cost: no party in the retained evidence — registry, counterparties, peering databases or observers — has publicly reconciled the self-declared market surface against observed routing, and the conditions that would resolve the contradiction are precisely definable.

A record that outlived its network

Internet number registries are unusual among business records in one respect: they are designed to outlast the activity they describe. A commercial register entry can be wound up, a can be struck off, but a role object in the RIPE Database persists until someone with the right maintenance authority edits or deletes it. That design choice is usually invisible, because most networks that stop operating also stop being interesting. The case of AS210860 makes the design choice visible.

The facts, as retained public sources present them, are straightforward to state and difficult to reconcile. The RIPE Database assigns the autonomous system number 210860 the as-name "edeka_digital" and the organisation object ORG-EDG14-RIPE; the administrative and technical contact for the object is a role object named DFINFRA, handle DA9499-RIPE. https://ip.cc/topic/asn/AS210860/ The role object was created on 10 June 2021, roughly ten weeks before the aut-num itself on 24 August 2021, and both objects were last modified on 27 October 2021. https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-lifecycle-ledger The organisation object is rendered by one mirror as "EDEKA Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs GmbH", registered at the district court of Hamburg under HRB 90516, with its last modification dated 13 May 2026. https://ip.cc/topic/asn/AS210860/ Another mirror of the same object renders the organisation name as "EDEKA DIGITAL GmbH" with a last-modified date of 27 October 2021. https://apps.db.ripe.net/db-web-ui/lookup?key=AS210860&type=aut-num The German commercial-register aggregator North Data carries the HRB 90516 entry for the Hamburg holding company. https://www.northdata.de/EDEKA%20Verwaltungs-%20und%20Beteiligungs%20GmbH,%20Hamburg/HRB%2090516

Against that static registry picture stands a dynamic routing picture. Hurricane Electric's BGP toolkit reports that AS210860 has not been visible in the global routing table since 26 March 2026, currently announces zero prefixes across both address families, has zero RPKI-originated-valid and zero RPKI-originated-invalid entries in its view, and has exactly one observed BGP peer: AS9211, Nawork Internet Informationssysteme GmbH. https://bgp.he.net/AS210860 The IPv4-specific view of the same toolkit repeats those figures and attributes one historically originated prefix to the network, which secondary coverage identifies as 193.21.248.0/21, associated with EDEKA DIGITAL GmbH. https://ipv4.bgp.he.net/AS210860 CIDR Report independently classifies the number as not currently used to announce prefixes in the global routing table and not used as a visible transit AS. https://www.cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS210860&view=2.0 IPinfo labels the ASN as Inactive with zero prefixes. https://ipinfo.io/AS210860

The self-declared surface

The contradiction comes from the other side of the ledger. A PeeringDB-derived record for "EDEKA DIGITAL, AS210860" declares a network type of "Other", a scope of "Not Disclosed", a traffic ratio of "Not Disclosed", a peering policy of "Open", an IRR AS-SET of AS210860, ten IPv4 prefixes and one IPv6 prefix. https://hostdir.net/networks/as210860-edeka-digital That is a declaration, not an observation: it is a self-description entered into a directory that other networks consult when deciding whether to interconnect. And it conflicts not only with the routing observations above but with the registry's own state, since the aut-num object's recorded creation and modification dates long predate the March 2026 silence. https://ip.cc/topic/asn/AS210860/

The disagreement does not stop there. CheckIP lists AS210860 with status "Active", organisation "EDEKA DIGITAL", and a RegDate of 2025-03-25 — a date that matches neither the 2021 RIPE creation timestamps nor any other retained record. https://checkip.com/asn/AS210860/ A further mirror, whois.ipip.net, reproduces the ASN record for the same number, adding one more divergent snapshot to the set. https://whois.ipip.net/AS210860 The IP.CC reproduction of the RPSL objects lists one IPv4 peer and one upstream as AS32787, Akamai — conflicting with Hurricane Electric's single observed peer of AS9211. https://apps.db.ripe.net/db-web-ui/lookup?key=AS210860&type=aut-num IODA, Georgia Tech's outage-detection platform, monitors the ASN under the name edeka_digital and exposes active-probing and BGP visibility panels for it, confirming that third-party monitoring infrastructure continues to track the number even as its visibility remains in question. https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/asn/210860 Meanwhile, the authoritative RIPE NCC Database UI is the correct primary source for the object's current field values, but no retained capture in this investigation obtained field-level content from that endpoint directly, which is itself part of the verification problem described below. https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-routing-evidence-september-2026

Prior BTW coverage has documented the lifecycle ledger of the objects, the divergence between registry declarations and routing observation, and the correction of an earlier name collision between this subject and the insolvent datacenter venture DINFRA GmbH of Siegen. https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-zero-announced-prefixes https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-lifecycle-ledger https://btw.media/en/dfinfra-as210860-registry-signal-and-verification-boundary https://btw.media/en/dfinfra-as210860-registry-signal-operational-control https://btw.media/en/dfinfra-as210860-missing-link-registration-operational-control — and BTW maintains the directory entry for the entity at https://btw.media/en/directory/dfinfra. What none of that coverage, and none of the retained public evidence examined here, shows is a completed verification: a point at which some named party compared the self-declared peering profile against observed routing and reconciled the difference in public.

Who pays, and when

The economics of this gap are easier to see than to fix. Every actor who consults these records bears a different slice of the verification cost, and none of them has an incentive structure that produces a public reconciliation.

Consider the four parties. First, the registry itself: the RIPE Database records what its maintainers enter. The aut-num is maintained under both RIPE-NCC-END-MNT and EDDI-MNT. https://ip.cc/topic/asn/AS210860/ The registry's role is to guarantee the integrity of the record, not the accuracy of its correspondence to operational reality. A role object persisting unchanged since October 2021 is, from the registry's perspective, a consistent record, not a defect. The cost of auditing every ASSIGNED aut-num against live routing falls on nobody by default.

Second, the organisation behind the record. The org object's most recent recorded modification on one mirror is dated 13 May 2026 — two months after the network went silent in the routing table. https://ip.cc/topic/asn/AS210860/ BTW's earlier reporting, based on commercial-register evidence, records that EDEKA DIGITAL GmbH was absorbed via a merger recorded on 5 August 2025 into the Hamburg holding company EDEKA Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs GmbH (HRB 90516). https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-lifecycle-ledger https://www.northdata.de/EDEKA%20Verwaltungs-%20und%20Beteiligungs%20GmbH,%20Hamburg/HRB%2090516 A corporate reorganisation of that shape explains a stale contact object mechanically: whoever held the maintenance credentials, and whatever internal team once operated "edeka_digital", may no longer exist in the same form, while the registry record persists untouched. But that explanation remains an inference. The retained evidence shows the register-side corporate change and the registry-side persistence; it does not show any documented internal decision to retire, maintain or abandon AS210860.

Third, the counterparties. A network operator evaluating AS210860 as a peering candidate would read the PeeringDB-derived record — ten prefixes, open policy — and would need to invest independent effort to discover that the network announces nothing. https://hostdir.net/networks/as210860-edeka-digital The failure mode is asymmetric: over-estimating a dormant network wastes one due-diligence conversation; the cost is real but bounded and private. There is no mechanism that publishes the result of that diligence. The same asymmetry applies to customers, transit providers and vendors of routing databases, all of whom consume the self-declared surface and quietly discount it.

Fourth, the observers. Hurricane Electric, CIDR Report, IPinfo, IODA and mirror databases each publish observations or reproductions, and each disagrees with at least one other on some attribute of the same number. https://bgp.he.net/AS210860 https://apps.db.ripe.net/db-web-ui/lookup?key=AS210860&type=aut-num https://www.cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS210860&view=2.0 https://ipinfo.io/AS210860 https://ioda.inetintel.cc.gatech.edu/asn/210860 https://checkip.com/asn/AS210860/ Observers aggregate; they do not adjudicate. The result is a market for verification signals in which every participant sees a different fragment and no participant is positioned to publish a definitive reconciliation — the situation this article documents rather than resolves.

The verification boundary, stated precisely

What is established by the retained sources can be separated cleanly from what is not. Established: the registry record's identity chain (aut-num, org, role object, maintenance handles, registration dates). https://ip.cc/topic/asn/AS210860/ Established: the routing silence since 26 March 2026 in the view of the most-cited independent observer, corroborated by CIDR Report's classification and IPinfo's Inactive label. https://bgp.he.net/AS210860 https://www.cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS210860&view=2.0 https://ipinfo.io/AS210860 Established: the self-declared peering surface of ten IPv4 prefixes and an open policy. https://hostdir.net/networks/as210860-edeka-digital Established: the commercial-register existence of the Hamburg holding company at HRB 90516 and its register-visible corporate changes. https://www.northdata.de/EDEKA%20Verwaltungs-%20und%20Beteiligungs%20GmbH,%20Hamburg/HRB%2090516 https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-lifecycle-ledger

Not established: any retained public evidence that the AS210860 footprint connects to a revenue-bearing external service, a customer, a contract, a price or a capacity commitment. https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-lifecycle-ledger Not established: the current authoritative values of the RIPE objects, because the authoritative endpoint returned only a page shell in the retained capture. https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-routing-evidence-september-2026 Not established: any internal EDEKA decision about the future of the number resource, its maintenance authority or its contact records. And not established: whether the PeeringDB record is stale, erroneous or maintained — its self-declared prefix count and open policy conflict with routing observation, but a declaration can be wrong in either direction. https://hostdir.net/networks/as210860-edeka-digital

The verification boundary matters because the alternative framings both overclaim. Calling the network "defunct" hardens an absence of observation into a corporate fact that no retained source asserts. Calling it "active" accepts a self-declaration contradicted by every independent observer.

The evidence-led position is narrower and more useful: a registry contact persists; the network it describes has been unobservable for roughly six months as of late September 2026; the market-facing description of that network remains in place and unchanged; and the cost of resolving the contradiction has so far been borne by nobody publicly.

Why this is a market-structure question, not a registry curiosity

It would be easy to file this under registry housekeeping. It belongs on the market side of the ledger, for three reasons.

First, verification cost is a barrier with a shape. Small networks evaluating interconnection with any counterpart rely on the self-declared surface because verifying it independently requires routing-toolkit fluency that not all commercial counterparties have. A dormant network with a live-looking peering profile imposes a small tax on every such evaluation. Multiply that across a registry ecosystem with thousands of assigned-but-silent numbers and the tax becomes structural: it shifts diligence cost from the party that controls the record to the parties that consume it.

Second, the record asymmetry interacts with corporate reorganisation. The EDEKA case shows the mechanism: a corporate merger on the register side (5 August 2025), an org-object edit on the registry mirror side (13 May 2026), a routing silence (26 March 2026), and a role object untouched since October 2021. https://ip.cc/topic/asn/AS210860/ https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-lifecycle-ledger https://www.northdata.de/EDEKA%20Verwaltungs-%20und%20Beteiligungs%20GmbH,%20Hamburg/HRB%2090516 Corporate change is common; registry records that survive it unchanged are the default, not the exception. Any counterparty doing diligence on a reorganised group's network assets inherits exactly the reconciliation problem documented here.

Third, the data-provider layer compounds rather than resolves the problem. When one provider says Active with a 2025 RegDate, another says Inactive, a third reproduces a different organisation name from a 2021 snapshot and a fourth lists a peer that the primary routing observer does not see, the consuming market faces a contradiction that cannot be resolved by consulting any single provider. https://apps.db.ripe.net/db-web-ui/lookup?key=AS210860&type=aut-num https://ipinfo.io/AS210860 https://checkip.com/asn/AS210860/ The fragments are individually accurate observations of different source layers — routing observation, registry mirror, self-declaration — but the market consumes them as a single signal, and the contradiction is invisible to anyone who reads only one.

What would change the picture

The falsifying conditions are unusually concrete. Any one of the following events, independently verifiable, would resolve or reshape the interpretation offered here.

Re-announcement. If AS210860 resumes announcing prefixes in the global routing table — in Hurricane Electric's view or any independent observer's — the dormant-state reading collapses and the PeeringDB surface regains credibility. https://bgp.he.net/AS210860

Registry edit. A modification to the aut-num, the role object DA9499-RIPE or the organisation object ORG-EDG14-RIPE, visible in the authoritative RIPE Database, would signal that maintenance authority has been exercised — in either direction, toward retirement or toward revival. https://btw.media/en/governance/rir-watchdog/ripe-ncc/story/dfinfra-as210860-routing-evidence-september-2026

PeeringDB reconciliation. An edit to the PeeringDB record that reduces the declared prefix count or changes the policy would indicate the self-declared surface is being maintained; continued stasis while routing remains silent extends the verification gap. https://hostdir.net/networks/as210860-edeka-digital

First-party statement. Any published statement from EDEKA Verwaltungs- und Beteiligungs GmbH or a successor entity about the status of AS210860, the DFINFRA role object or the underlying number resources would constitute the first public reconciliation in the retained record. https://www.northdata.de/EDEKA%20Verwaltungs-%20und%20Beteiligungs%20GmbH,%20Hamburg/HRB%2090516

Absence of all four conditions over time is itself evidence: each month of silence with an unchanged self-declared profile widens the gap between what the market-facing record promises and what the network does, and deepens the question of who, if anyone, is accountable for that gap.