Glossary · Network
ASN
An Autonomous System Number: the identifier for a network that routes its own block of IP addresses on the internet.
Every routable IP address belongs to an autonomous system, operated by an ISP, a hosting company, a university, or a large enterprise. The ASN identifies that operator, so it answers who runs the network an address sits on.
This is more stable and more useful than geography for risk work. A residential broadband ASN and a cloud-hosting ASN behave completely differently as sources of signup traffic, regardless of which country they are in.
Our IP engine resolves the ASN and organisation locally from a maintained database, so the classification does not depend on an external per-query service.