Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

Based at the University of Southern California (USC), the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) is a non-profit International authority which has the responsibility of allocating global Internet protocol numbers (IP addresses) to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) as per the allocation policy. IP addresses help to identify the computers situated in different parts of the country.

In 1989, the Federal Network Council (FNC) and the Internet Society (ISCO) assigned the control of TLDs to IANA. From 1990 onwards, IANA started to assign unique values for Internet protocol addresses under the contract of the Government of United States, Department of Commerce (DOC).

IANA offers corporate memberships in five voting categories and two non-voting categories. The organization offers an extensive range of services under the Government of United States contract, which includes managing top level domains (ccTLDs and gTLDs), allocating address space to RIR, offering the IP parameter registries in support of the Protocol Supporting Organization (PSO), providing .int registry which is used by intergovernmental organizations. Anyone can avail the information of the IP address from the WHOIS database which is maintained by the RIR.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority administers and protects the information that is provided by the root name servers. The information collected is not exposed to affiliated or non-affiliated agencies at any point. On request, certain types of information are made public and will be available from IANA's website. On request, IANA confirms the request and assigns the port numbers.

By late 1998, the functions of IANA were transferred to ICANN. Now, IANA is managed by the Internet Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). At present, ICANN performs the functions that were earlier under the purview of IANA.