How do I find out who owned an original Class A network before it was subnetted?

[David]

I am half way down (up?) a rabbit hole due to chasing ownership of IPV4
addresses.

I can take a known address and use WHOIS to find out the current owner,
and the range that it is part of.

However back in the day the Class A networks were handed out like sweeties
to early adopters, but have mainly been clawed back now.

I have found a very useful Wikipedia page which lists a lot of original
owners, but this doesn't fully tie in with what I think I know.

I always thought that BT (formerly Post Office) owned at least 2 Class A
networks at one time.

So is there an interactive tool which shows who owns the Class A (and is
presumably responsible for the allocation of subnets)?

I realise that a lot of the businesses which originally owned these Class
A networks (e.g. DEC) no longer exist as such.

Cheers



Dave R

[Abandoned Trolley]

"and is presumably responsible for the allocation of subnets" ?

That would imply that CIDR was effectively administered by the original
network / subnet owners - which I would think a bit unlikely

[Theo]

Post by David
I am half way down (up?) a rabbit hole due to chasing ownership of IPV4
addresses.
I can take a known address and use WHOIS to find out the current owner,
and the range that it is part of.

You can also look things up in the BGP (ie the current routing database), eg:
https://bgp.he.net/

Post by David
However back in the day the Class A networks were handed out like sweeties
to early adopters, but have mainly been clawed back now.
I have found a very useful Wikipedia page which lists a lot of original
owners, but this doesn't fully tie in with what I think I know.

This one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assigned_/8_IPv4_address_blocks

Post by David
I always thought that BT (formerly Post Office) owned at least 2 Class A
networks at one time.
So is there an interactive tool which shows who owns the Class A (and is
presumably responsible for the allocation of subnets)?

https://ant.isi.edu/address/browse/index.html
is current.

Not interactive, but as of 2006:
https://xkcd.com/195/
and https://ant.isi.edu/address/
has a screenshot from 2010, and a video 2006-14.

They have a dataset repository going back to 2006 but it looks like you have
to request access.

Theo