[routing-wg] AS55330 -- Routing oddities

Some people seem to think that I'm sort of a master Internet sleuth.
The truth is that I'm just as dumb as anybody else, and maybe even
moreso.  But if one spends enough time looking at stuff on the Internet,
it really takes both very little time and also very little in the way
of brains to notice many many inexplicable oddities.

AS55330 is a case in point.  This ASN was allocated/assigned to the
Afghan government by APNIC, circa 2009-12-08.  Given the nature of
the registrant in this case, One might thus reasonably assume that
this ASN, belonging as it does to a national government, would be one
of the last ones that one would ever see as being involved in any
kind of untoward hanky panky or funny business on the Internet.

But despite that, I feel compelled to ask if anyone would like to take
a stab at explaining to me why the Afghan national government's ASN
would be announcing routes to IP blocks belonging to (a) a Chinese
commercial enterprise (180.94.99.0/24) and also (b) several RIPE-issued
IPv4 blocks that appear to be the property of some Airbus facility
located in Norway (182.50.176.0/24, 182.50.177.0/24, 182.50.178.0/23,
182.50.180.0/22):

https://bgp.he.net/AS55330#_prefixes

I am not persuaded that Airbus/Norway's apparent reliance on the Afghan
government to route their IPv4 space for them is an entirely sustainable
business model, over the longer term.

If I have misunderstood any of the data I'm looking at, then I do apologize
to all parties concerned.


Regards,
rfg