Zain IP Ranges
Zain is the Kuwaiti operator founded in 1983 as Mobile Telecommunications Company, and AS42961 is the number its Kuwaiti subscribers appear from. RIPE files the aut-num with the as-name GPRS-AS, a descr of ZAIN KW, and the organisation ORG-MTC1-RIPE, whose org-name is still the old legal one, Mobile Telecommunications Company K.S.C.P., registered as an LIR at a Safat post box in Kuwait. The record was created on 15 May 2007, last edited on 4 September 2018, and is maintained by MTC-GPRS-KW. A lookup that returns GPRS-AS Mobile Telecommunications Company K.S.C.P. with no mention of Zain anywhere in it is showing you this network, not a different one.
- Provider
- Zain
- Primary ASN
- AS42961
- Category
- ISP
- Headquarters
- Kuwait City, Kuwait
- Announced IPv4 prefixes
- 190
- Registry
- RIPE
Known IP ranges
These prefixes are currently announced to the global routing table by AS42961 (GPRS-AS Mobile Telecommunications Company K.S.C.P.). Prefix sets change over time - use WHOIS Lookup for the authoritative record on any specific address.
37.36.128.0/18
37.37.0.0/18
37.34.192.0/18
37.39.0.0/18
31.203.128.0/18
37.39.192.0/18
31.203.64.0/18
149.147.64.0/18
37.38.0.0/18
31.203.192.0/18
2a00:4520::/32
2a00:4523::/32
2a00:4522::/32 (IPv6)
What does a Zain IP mean in a privacy test?
An address on AS42961 puts the session on Zain's Kuwaiti network, and two things follow from that. The first is that reverse DNS will not help you here. Addresses sampled across 31.203.64.0/18, 37.36.128.0/18, 37.38.0.0/18, 95.66.64.0/18, 149.147.64.0/18 and 178.161.64.0/18 all return NXDOMAIN, and RIPEstat's reverse-delegation data comes back empty for 37.36.0.0/14 and 31.203.64.0/18 alike, so unlike the carriers that write dsl or apn or a city label into a hostname, Zain Kuwait publishes no name that would separate a fixed line from a mobile session or one governorate from another. A missing PTR here is the normal state of the network, not a sign that something has been hidden. The second is the ASN's own name, which misleads people in both directions. GPRS-AS and the maintainer MTC-GPRS-KW are survivals of the record created in 2007 for the packet-data side of a 2G network, and they are why the holder string reads Mobile Telecommunications Company rather than Zain. They are not evidence that a current address on this ASN is a 2G session, and the absence of the word Zain is not evidence that the lookup found the wrong company.
Where Zain Kuwait's address data actually lives
Zain Kuwait publishes no geofeed and no customer-facing allowlist, so almost everything machine-readable about this space comes from RIPE - the exception is the CDN block noted below, which sits in ARIN. Checked on 2026-08-23, the inetnum 37.36.0.0 - 37.39.7.255 carries no geofeed attribute and no remarks line mentioning one; the same is true of the other objects behind this ASN. What RIPE does hold is uniform to the point of being uninformative: the assignments are netname ZAIN-KW, descr ZAIN KW, country KW, status ASSIGNED PA, org ORG-MTC1-RIPE, maintained by MTC-GPRS-KW, with the same contact handle ZKRA1-RIPE as admin-c and tech-c. Note that several of the biggest objects are not CIDR-aligned. The largest reads 37.36.0.0 - 37.39.7.255, and 31.203.8.0 - 31.203.255.255 and 149.147.8.0 - 149.147.255.255 tie behind it at 63,488 addresses each; on all three a whois query returns a range that matches no announced prefix, and reading the covering object as though it were the block in BGP will mislead you about how the space is cut up. Others are aligned - 95.66.64.0/18 is recorded that way and announced that way - so check rather than assume.
The routing data is registered more than once, in at least three registries under three different maintainers. In RIPE the route objects sit under MTC-GPRS-KW with descriptions that are mostly the flat string MTC GPRS AS Number, though some read Zain Mobile Connectivity Services or ZAIN KW, and they overlap heavily: within 95.66.0.0 alone there are objects at /17, /18, /19, /21 and /24 for the same addresses, created between 2008 and 2016. In RADB the same space is registered under MAINT-AS8966, which is Etisalat's maintainer rather than Zain's, with descriptions that name the regional transit path instead of the operator: ZAIN via EMIX, GBI via EMIX and QNET via EMIX all appear against origin AS42961. A third copy sits in NTTCOM, where 178.161.96.0/19 carries a proxy-registered object under MAINT-AS9304. On the IPv6 side the allocation is 2a00:4520::/29, status ALLOCATED-BY-RIR, netname KW-MTC-20130220 - and the RIPE object was created on 2016-04-14, not in February 2013, so read the date inside a netname as a label rather than a timestamp you can date the block by.
Kuwaiti subscriber, Kuwaiti transit customer, or a different Zain country
The first thing this ASN does not tell you is which Zain. Zain Group's own about-us page describes a business operating in eight markets across the Middle East and Africa, and AS42961 is one of them: the aut-num's descr is ZAIN KW and the organisation behind it is the Kuwaiti company. The other operations hold their own numbers, and RIPE lists them under their own holder strings - including AS31452 as ZAIN-BH-AS for Zain Bahrain, AS48832 as Zain-Jo for the Jordanian company, AS59588 as ZAINAS-IQ for Al Atheer Telecommunication in Iraq and AS37376 for Zain South Sudan. That list is not the whole group - the Saudi and Sudanese markets are not on it - but none of the other markets is announced by AS42961 either, so an address here is a Kuwaiti connection and reading it as a Zain-branded address from anywhere else in the group is wrong. The registry also outlives the business: AS37287 is still filed as Zain Zambia PLC even though Zain divested its sub-Saharan African operations to Bharti Airtel in 2010 and Zambia is not among the markets Zain's own site lists, which is a general caution about trusting a holder string as a statement of current ownership.
Inside Kuwait, the second thing it does not tell you is whether the address is an endpoint at all. RIPEstat gives AS42961 twenty observed neighbours, and only one of them sits on the left: AS8529, the upstream. The other nineteen are downstreams, and they include other Kuwaiti networks such as AS6412, KW Gulfnet International KEMS LLC, and AS47442, Mada Communications. This ASN therefore appears in the middle of a path toward somebody else's network as readily as at the end of one, and a hop on AS42961 is not proof that the destination is a Zain subscriber. Nor is everything it originates Zain's own space: 184.51.244.0/22 is announced by AS42961 but registered in ARIN to Akamai Technologies, Inc. under netname AKAMAI with country US, an on-net cache inside the operator, so a whois lookup there returns a US CDN rather than a Kuwaiti carrier. The upstream is its own trap. The registered policy on the aut-num imports from and exports to exactly one number, AS59605, held as ZAINGP-AS by Zain Omantel International FZ-LLC and announcing no space of its own; the number actually observed above AS42961 is AS8529, whose holder string reads OMANTEL-AS Zain Omantel International FZ-LLC. Both belong to the wholesale joint venture Zain and Omantel announced, so Omantel appearing above a Kuwaiti mobile address is the group's own international arm rather than a foreign carrier or a routing mistake.
Related tools
Frequently asked questions
What IP ranges does Zain use in Kuwait?
They are announced under AS42961, which RIPE holds with the as-name GPRS-AS and the descr ZAIN KW, under the organisation ORG-MTC1-RIPE and the maintainer MTC-GPRS-KW. The largest announced blocks are /18s, among them 37.36.0.0/18, 37.36.128.0/18, 31.203.64.0/18, 95.66.64.0/18 and 149.147.64.0/18. Check a specific address against the origin on its route object rather than against the covering inetnum, because several of the biggest inetnums are not CIDR-aligned - the largest is recorded as 37.36.0.0 to 37.39.7.255, with 31.203.8.0 to 31.203.255.255 and 149.147.8.0 to 149.147.255.255 tied behind it, and none of those three matches a prefix in BGP.
Why does my privacy test show a Zain IP?
Because the connection is leaving through Zain's Kuwaiti network with nothing tunnelling in front of it. A test that reports AS42961 has established the operator and the country and very little else: the same ASN carries fixed and mobile subscribers, supplies transit to other Kuwaiti networks such as AS6412 and AS47442, and publishes neither reverse DNS nor a geofeed that would narrow the result to a line type or a city. If you expected a VPN exit instead, the tunnel is not carrying this traffic.
Does an IP in this range prove the traffic is really Zain?
The origin does, as far as routing can. The prefixes 37.36.128.0/18, 37.34.192.0/18 and 31.203.64.0/18 all validate as RPKI-valid under origin AS42961, so a network that drops RPKI-invalid routes would reject this space announced from anywhere else. What the origin does not establish is who is using the address, or even that the block is Zain's own: AS42961 also announces 184.51.244.0/22, an ARIN block registered to Akamai Technologies rather than to Zain. With no geofeed published and no reverse DNS to read, an AS42961 address identifies the operator and the country, not a person, a city or a device.
Is AS42961 the same network as Zain in Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Jordan?
No. AS42961 is registered to the Kuwaiti company and its descr is ZAIN KW. The group's other operations have their own numbers under their own holder strings, including AS31452 for Zain Bahrain, AS48832 for the Jordanian company, AS59588 for Al Atheer Telecommunication in Iraq and AS37376 for Zain South Sudan. That is not the full list - the Saudi and Sudanese operations run on numbers of their own - but a Zain-branded address from any of those markets does not appear on AS42961.
Why does a traceroute to a Zain Kuwait address show Omantel?
Because the only upstream RIPEstat observes above AS42961 is AS8529, whose RIPE holder string reads OMANTEL-AS Zain Omantel International FZ-LLC. The aut-num's own registered policy names a different number, AS59605, held by the same company as ZAINGP-AS and announcing no space at all. Both are the Zain and Omantel wholesale joint venture rather than a separate Omani carrier, so the Omantel label above a Kuwaiti mobile address is expected.