Had a very similar experience when I requested a Private Enterprise Number (PEN) in the early 00s. I was doing some experimentation with LDAP, mailman and iden

Had a very similar experience when I requested a Private Enterprise Number (PEN) in the early 00s. I was doing some experimentation with LDAP, mailman and identity based encryption and needed some OIDs to support my undergraduate project work. Private Enterprise Numbers are identifiers that can be used in SNMP configurations, in LDAP configurations, and wherever the use of an ASN.1 object identifier (OID) is appropriate. So I went about signing up my university for a PEN. It helped that I also worked for the IT Services team at the time but I distinctly remember the request being done by email with the response more of less being "here's your number". :) To my knowledge, I believe I'm the only person who has made use of the PEN assigned to the university.