Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is a department of ICANN, a nonprofit private American corporation 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 numbers.
Prior to the establishment of ICANN primarily for this purpose in 1998, 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, until ICANN was created to assume the responsibility under a United States Department of Commerce contract.
Responsibilities
IANA is broadly responsible for the allocation of globally unique names and numbers that are used in Internet protocols that are published as Request for Comments documents. These documents describe methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems. IANA maintains a close liaison with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and RFC Editorial team in fulfilling this function.
