Please Whitelist This Site?

I know everyone hates ads. But please understand that I am providing premium content for free that takes hundreds of hours of time to research and write. I don't want to go to a pay-only model like some sites, but when more and more people block ads, I end up working for free. And I have a family to support, just like you. :)

If you like The TCP/IP Guide, please consider the download version. It's priced very economically and you can read all of it in a convenient format without ads.

If you want to use this site for free, I'd be grateful if you could add the site to the whitelist for Adblock. To do so, just open the Adblock menu and select "Disable on tcpipguide.com". Or go to the Tools menu and select "Adblock Plus Preferences...". Then click "Add Filter..." at the bottom, and add this string: "@@||tcpipguide.com^$document". Then just click OK.

Thanks for your understanding!

Sincerely, Charles Kozierok
Author and Publisher, The TCP/IP Guide


NOTE: Using software to mass-download the site degrades the server and is prohibited.
If you want to read The TCP/IP Guide offline, please consider licensing it. Thank you.

The Book is Here... and Now On Sale!

Enjoy The TCP/IP Guide? Get the complete PDF!
The TCP/IP Guide

Custom Search







Table Of Contents  The TCP/IP Guide
 9  Networking Fundamentals
      9  Network Standards and Standards Organizations

Previous Topic/Section
Internet Standards Organizations (ISOC, IAB, IESG, IETF, IRSG, IRTF)
Previous Page
Pages in Current Topic/Section
1
2
3
Next Page
Internet Standards and the Request For Comment (RFC) Process
Next Topic/Section

Internet Registration Authorities and Registries (IANA, ICANN, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, RIPE NCC)
(Page 2 of 3)

Internet Centralized Registration Authorities

In both of the cases above, some sort of centralized organization is required. We need a group to take responsibility for managing parameters and ensuring that everyone uses the same ones, just as they use the same protocols. We also need to coordinate the assignment of identifiers such as addresses and names, to ensure that they are created and allocated in a way that is acceptable to all. In the world of the Internet, these are sometimes called management authorities or registration authorities.

The organization originally responsible for this task was the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Amazingly, while the name makes it sound like the IANA was a huge bureaucracy, it was effectively one man: Jonathan B. (Jon) Postel, one of the most important pioneers of Internet and TCP/IP technologies. Jon Postel ran IANA until his untimely and unfortunate death in 1998.

IANA was originally charged with the task of managing which IP address blocks had been assigned to different companies and groups, and maintaining periodically-published lists of Internet parameters such as UDP and TCP port numbers. It also was in charge of registrations of DNS domain names, which were more directly handled by the Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC), a service managed by the United States government. Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) was later granted the contract to manage the InterNIC, and was eventually purchased by Verisign.

As the Internet continued to grow, an effort commenced in the mid-1990s to define a new organization that would be responsible for the central registration of Internet addresses and names. This took the form of a new private, non-profit company called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). ICANN is officially charged with all of the centralized registration tasks I have mentioned so far in this topic, including IP address assignment, DNS domain name assignment, and protocol parameters management.

In a simpler world, this development would have meant that ICANN would have replaced IANA, which would no longer exist. Instead, ICANN kept IANA around, leaving that organization in charge of overseeing IP address registration and Internet parameters. ICANN is of course now in charge of IANA, so really both organizations are responsible for IP addresses and parameters. This often leads to confusion, and to make things worse, it is common to see IANA and ICANN mentioned in conjunction as “IANA/ICANN” or “ICANN/IANA”.

Key Concept: Internet registration authorities are centralized organizations responsible for coordinating protocol parameters and globally-assigned resources such as IP addresses. The first such organization was the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), which was initially in charge of IP address assignment, DNS domain name management and protocol parameters.Today the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has overall responsibility for these activities; the IANA operates under the auspices of ICANN and is still responsible for IP address assignment and parameter coordination.



Previous Topic/Section
Internet Standards Organizations (ISOC, IAB, IESG, IETF, IRSG, IRTF)
Previous Page
Pages in Current Topic/Section
1
2
3
Next Page
Internet Standards and the Request For Comment (RFC) Process
Next Topic/Section

If you find The TCP/IP Guide useful, please consider making a small Paypal donation to help the site, using one of the buttons below. You can also donate a custom amount using the far right button (not less than $1 please, or PayPal gets most/all of your money!) In lieu of a larger donation, you may wish to consider purchasing a download license of The TCP/IP Guide. Thanks for your support!
Donate $2
Donate $5
Donate $10
Donate $20
Donate $30
Donate: $



Home - Table Of Contents - Contact Us

The TCP/IP Guide (http://www.TCPIPGuide.com)
Version 3.0 - Version Date: September 20, 2005

© Copyright 2001-2005 Charles M. Kozierok. All Rights Reserved.
Not responsible for any loss resulting from the use of this site.