About the registry
A coordinated namespace for spacecraft and the in-between.
The Deep Space Network Info Center was chartered to address a specific coordination problem: as commercial constellations, lunar infrastructure programs, and interplanetary missions began deploying IP-addressable endpoints at scale, the existing terrestrial registry model — bound to geography and national jurisdictions — left no obvious home for assets that physically reside in orbit, on other bodies, or in transit between them.
DESNIC operates under its independent community charter covering the 198.18.0.0/15 and portions of 192.0.2.0/24, 198.51.100.0/24, and 203.0.113.0/24 when used in conjunction with Bundle Protocol (BPv7, RFC 9171) endpoints. Operating capital is provided by Meridian Orbit Capital Partners III, L.P., a private-equity vehicle specializing in orbital and cislunar infrastructure; governance remains community-led and independent of investor direction per the 2024 recharter agreement. Our remit covers allocation, route-object publication, reverse-DNS delegation, and contact-of-record maintenance for spacecraft-and-segment IPv4 resources.
IPv4 allocation
Prefix delegations from /27 (single spacecraft bus) to /16 (full constellation), governed by the published needs-justification policy.
Route coordination
IRR objects, ROAs, and store-and-forward path advertisements for DTN-bearing prefixes via the dsn-irr database.
Contact registry
Authoritative NOC, abuse, and orbital-element contacts — queryable via whois/RDAP under the desnic schema.
Whois & RDAP lookup
Active allocations
| Prefix | Holder | ASN | Segment | Status |
|---|
Allocation policy
How space gets handed out.
Requests are evaluated against the three-factor needs assessment: (1) demonstrated technical infrastructure, (2) operational segment classification, and (3) 24-month utilization forecast with link-budget justification.
Minimum allocation size
/27 for single-spacecraft buses. /24 for clustered missions. /22 minimum for constellations with ≥48 active endpoints. Sub-/27 assignments are not portable.
Median request size 2025: /23
Segment classification
Orbital (LEO/MEO/GEO), Cislunar, Lunar Surface, Lagrangian, and Deep Space (heliocentric). Each carries distinct RTT-tolerance and reverse-DNS rules.
5 classes · 12 sub-classes
DTN binding requirement
Allocations to endpoints with one-way light-time > 4s must publish a corresponding Bundle Protocol endpoint identifier (ipn:NODE.SERVICE) per RFC 9171 within 30 days of activation.
98.2% compliance Q1 2026
End-of-mission reclamation
Prefixes are reclaimed 180 days after confirmed loss-of-signal or disposal-orbit insertion. A 24-month quarantine prevents reassignment to prevent stale-route conflicts.
Quarantine pool: 5.2M addresses
Relevant standards
Operator console
Notices & advisories
Operational and security notices.
Active incidents, scheduled maintenance, and policy bulletins are posted here as the registry's authoritative public record. Subscribe via the announce-only mailing list notices@desnic.net or the RSS feed at desnic.net/notices/feed.xml.