Also I found some records that indicate that 160.116.0.0/16 had something to do with eskom.co.za and that organization's physical address is/was located in Johanesburg. I think it would be best if somebody emails me info on AfriNOG or associated mailing list and I'll ask this question there, probably more likely to find somebody there who knows what was going on so long ago... On Sun, 11 May 2003 william@elan.net wrote:
Hello,
I want to alert you everyone on the maillist regarding ip block 160.116.0.0/16, the block was announced by HE and XO previously (in my own routing table it is not showing right now) so these organizations are probably aware of the unsolicited emails that were coming out of this block and chose to not announce it any more. I'm hoping other organizations that maybe approaced to announce the block would be alerted by this email and not let it show up on tne net again.
I'm also trying to find out more about if this block is really hijacked or not. The address listed in ARIN database is "P.O. Box 261333, Excom, South Africa" and as far as I can tell this address is the one that was used originally (at least as of 1994) and when block first appeared on the net, it was announced through AS1957. I also tracked that network in ARIN database was originally named "Affiliated Computing Services--Uninet Project" which means it had some associated with UNINET which is/was South Africa's education/university network (www.tenet.ac.za) kind of like NSFNET was in US as far as I can remember. As far as I can see most of other organizations associated with uninet are being announced through AS3741 (this includes blocks 160.114.0.0/16, 160.115.0.0/16, 160.118.0.0/16, and many of the of the blocks from 196.11.0.0/16). Uninet/Tenet itself is using ip block 196.21.0.0/16 and several others and these are and announced through AS2018 (and none of these are AS## 1228 - 1332 which are the as# in arin records for uninet, anyway its probably just historical records).
I can not find any information about original domain that organization that had this block may have had but currently it seems to be affiliatedcomputing.com and record is pointing to the same address as arin block but I can not confirm if it was this way originally or if the domain was reregistered (but I'm sure whoever controls the domain now is involved in unsolicited email).
Now if anybody is here from South Africa, possibly UNINET/TENET or somebody associated with AS1957 or AS3741 and knows anything about this block please reply and if something wrong did happen as far as ARIN records, we need to let them know.