Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

Abbreviation	IANA
Founded	December 1988; 36 years ago (1988-12)
Founder	U.S. Department of Commerce
Focus	Manage DNS zones
Headquarters	12025 Waterfront Drive, Suite 300, Los Angeles, CA 90094-2536, USA
Location	Playa Vista, Los Angeles, United States
Owner	ICANN
Key people	Kim Davies
Website	www.iana.org

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The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a standards organization that oversees global IP address allocation, autonomous system number allocation, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other Internet Protocol–related symbols and Internet numbers.^[1][2]

Currently it is a function of ICANN, a nonprofit private American corporation established in 1998 primarily for this purpose under a United States Department of Commerce contract.^[3] ICANN managed IANA directly from 1998 through 2016, when it was transferred to Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), an affiliate of ICANN that operates IANA today. Before it, IANA was administered principally by Jon Postel at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California (USC) situated at Marina Del Rey (Los Angeles), under a contract USC/ISI had with the United States Department of Defense.

In addition, five regional Internet registries delegate number resources to their customers, local Internet registries, Internet service providers, and end-user organizations. A local Internet registry is an organization that assigns parts of its allocation from a regional Internet registry to other customers. Most local Internet registries are also Internet service providers.