Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States; it is a division of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). IANA is charged with three major functions of Internet governance concerning unique identifiers: (1) allocation of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, (2) root zone management for the Internet’s Domain Name System (DNS)—top-level domain names such as .uk or .com, and (3) maintaining the codes and numbers involved in many IPs for email, routing, and the Ethernet. The organization thus ensures that there are no overlapping or conflicting domain names. IANA delegates the responsibility of assigning blocks of IP addresses to five regional Internet registries, which in turn allocate them to Internet service providers and other organizations.

IANA thus ...