Bharti Airtel IP Ranges
Bharti Airtel runs several networks and AS45609 is the mobile one: APNIC files it as BHARTI-MOBILITY-AS-AP, described in the record as Bharti Airtel Ltd. AS for GPRS Service, registered 2009-01-29 with the aut-num held under organisation handle ORG-BAL1-AP. It is not Airtel's fixed-line broadband number, which is AS24560, as-name AIRTELBROADBAND-AS-AP and described as Telemedia Services in Bangalore, nor the older backbone number AS9498. APNIC Labs ranks AS45609 second in India at 146,204,933 estimated users, 24.75 percent, behind Reliance Jio on AS55836 at 51.46 percent and well ahead of Airtel's own broadband network at 9.71 percent.
- Provider
- Bharti Airtel
- Primary ASN
- AS45609
- Category
- ISP
- Headquarters
- New Delhi, India
- Announced IPv4 prefixes
- 2061
- Registry
- APNIC
Known IP ranges
These prefixes are currently announced to the global routing table by AS45609 (BHARTI-MOBILITY-AS-AP - Bharti Airtel Ltd. AS for GPRS Service). Prefix sets change over time - use WHOIS Lookup for the authoritative record on any specific address.
182.67.0.0/16
223.183.0.0/16
223.234.0.0/16
223.191.128.0/17
171.60.0.0/17
171.78.0.0/17
223.229.0.0/17
171.49.0.0/17
106.199.128.0/17
106.210.0.0/17
2401:4900:a80::/41
2401:4900:1000::/41
2401:4900:b00::/41 (IPv6)
What does a Bharti Airtel IP mean in a privacy test?
An address on AS45609 is a phone or a mobile-broadband device on Airtel's Indian network, not a home fibre line and not a rented server. That matters in a privacy test in a way an ordinary broadband result does not, because mobile addresses move: the address a site records is drawn from a carrier pool and can differ between sessions on the same handset even when nothing about your setup changed. Airtel registers this space as whole /11 and /12 allocations under the netname BHARTI-MO-IN, and sampled lookups inside them return that parent rather than any smaller object, so nothing in the address registry ties an address to a device, a city or a plan. Where the space is subdivided at all it is by licensed telecom circle, and that subdivision lives in the routing registry rather than the address registry: route objects originated by AS45609 file 182.67.0.0/17 against Punjab and 182.67.128.0/17 against a netname reading BCL-801201-WEST-BENGAL. If you expected a VPN exit and saw this instead, the tunnel is not carrying the traffic.
Where Airtel's mobile address data is published
There is no geofeed and no PeeringDB record for this ASN. A PeeringDB query for 45609 returns an empty set, as does one for AS24560, the fixed-line number; the group's only PeeringDB network entry is AS9498, which gives the IRR as-set as APNIC::AS9498:AS-BHARTI-IN and an open peering policy. That entry describes the backbone, a network APNIC Labs ranks 49th in India at 0.08 percent of users, so it is the wrong document to read for this ASN. The real material is APNIC whois, and the useful thing about it is that Airtel keeps mobile and fixed-line resources under separate sets of handles. The mobile allocations sit under org ORG-BAL2-AP with netname: BHARTI-MO-IN, mnt-lower: MAINT-IN-MOBILITY and mnt-irt: IRT-BHARTI-MO-IN: 223.176.0.0/12 registered 2010-09-14 and 106.192.0.0/11 registered 2011-03-17. Fixed-line space is a different set entirely, with 182.64.0.0/12 registered as netname: BHARTI-IN under org ORG-BAL1-AP, mnt-lower: MAINT-IN-BBIL and abuse to IRT-BHARTI-TELEMEDIA-IN. Note that the aut-num itself sits on the fixed-line side of that split, under ORG-BAL1-AP with IRT-BHARTI-IN, so the ASN record and the address records it announces do not share handles.
The only place the network is described more finely is the internet routing registry, and it needs handling with care. Route objects originated by AS45609 and maintained under MAINT-IN-BBIL are registered to Bharti Cellular Limited with descr: BHARTI-AIRTEL-LTD-MOBILITY-SERVICES-IN and carry a licensed telecom circle: 182.67.0.0/17 against Punjab, 182.67.128.0/17 against BCL-801201-WEST-BENGAL. Alongside them the same /16 carries a stale RADB object at 182.67.0.0/24 described as a proxy-registered PACNET route under MAINT-AS4637, still naming AS45609 as origin, which is a record of a company absorbed years ago rather than of anything currently in the path. And note that this mobility ASN announces prefixes drawn from both handle sets, so origin AS and registrant organisation do not line up cleanly. Treat a circle name as a hint about where a block was commissioned, not as a location for the device using it.
Reading an Airtel mobile address in a log
Reverse DNS will not help. Sampled addresses in 223.176.0.0/12 and 106.192.0.0/11 return NXDOMAIN, and the reverse zone covering 182.67.0.1 has no responding nameserver at all: the query for 1.0.67.182.in-addr.arpa fails for want of a server rather than returning a name. There is no naming convention here separating a handset from a mobile hotspot from a router interface, which is a real difference from the fixed-line side of the same company.
Two things do separate cases. The first is which handle set covers the address: a block under BHARTI-MO-IN and org ORG-BAL2-AP is mobility space, one under BHARTI-IN with abuse to IRT-BHARTI-TELEMEDIA-IN is fixed-line space, and the covering object tells you which even when the announcing ASN does not. The second is depth. Sampled lookups inside the mobility allocations return the /11 or /12 parent itself rather than any assignment beneath it, which is what a pool handed out by the network looks like as opposed to space delegated to identifiable customers. An inbound connection from AS45609 is therefore a subscriber device rather than Airtel hosting something for a named third party, and there is no registry record that will name the subscriber for you.
Related tools
Frequently asked questions
Is AS45609 Bharti Airtel's main network?
It belongs to Bharti Airtel, but it is the mobile network rather than the fixed-line one. APNIC files it as BHARTI-MOBILITY-AS-AP and describes it as the AS for GPRS service. Airtel's fixed-line broadband runs on AS24560, as-name AIRTELBROADBAND-AS-AP, and AS9498 is the older backbone number. By APNIC Labs' user-population estimate the mobility ASN is by far the largest of the three and the second largest network in India.
What IP ranges does Airtel's mobile network use?
The blocks listed above are the largest currently announced under AS45609. In APNIC whois most sit inside allocations registered under the netname BHARTI-MO-IN and the organisation handle ORG-BAL2-AP, with the mobility maintainer MAINT-IN-MOBILITY. Airtel publishes no geofeed, so there is no per-block city or region file to check them against.
Why does an Airtel address appear in my privacy test?
Because the request left over your Airtel mobile data connection with nothing tunnelling it. If a VPN was supposed to be up, it is not carrying that traffic. Because this is a carrier pool rather than a fixed line, the exact address can also differ from the one a previous test reported even though nothing about your setup changed.
Can you tell which city an Airtel mobile address is in?
Not from the address registry. The allocations are registered as whole /11 and /12 blocks with a single corporate address attached. The nearest thing to a location is in the routing registry, where some /17s carry a licensed telecom circle such as Punjab or West Bengal in the route object description, but a circle is a licence area rather than a place and the device using the address need not be in it.
Does Airtel publish a peering policy for this ASN?
Not for AS45609. A PeeringDB query on that number returns nothing, and the same is true of the fixed-line number AS24560. The group's only PeeringDB network record is filed under AS9498, which gives an open peering policy and names the IRR as-set APNIC::AS9498:AS-BHARTI-IN. That record describes the backbone rather than the mobility network.