Overview
Apple owns 17.0.0.0/8 — the entire 17.x.x.x address space — assigned to Apple in 1990 when class A blocks were still being given out. This is one of the largest single allocations to a private company. AS714 carries the bulk of Apple’s consumer-facing traffic. AS6185 covers some corporate infrastructure. Apple also rents capacity from AWS, Akamai, and Cloudflare for elastic scaling.
Services on these IPs
Common services on Apple IPs: APNs (push notifications), iCloud Drive sync, iMessage encrypted relay, Find My network beacons, Apple Maps backend, Software Update servers (often fronted by Akamai), App Store binaries. iCloud Private Relay routes user traffic via Apple-owned ingress and a partner egress (Cloudflare, Akamai, Fastly).
How to detect Apple IPs
Reverse DNS for AS714 IPs returns various *.apple.com subdomains. Any IP starting with 17. is Apple-owned (the /8 ownership is unambiguous). Apple does not publish a comprehensive range JSON; BGP looking glasses and the /8 allocation are the practical sources.
When this matters
Mail server operators add Apple ranges to allowlists for iCloud Mail SPF/DKIM checks. Mobile app developers monitor for legitimate APNs feedback connections. Privacy researchers study Private Relay traffic patterns.
Caveats
17.0.0.0/8 is a /8 — that is the entire range. Apple uses only a small fraction of those 16M addresses in practice; most are unassigned. The sub-ranges below are well-known service-specific allocations.