The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is responsible for the global coordination of the DNS Root, IP addressing, and other Internet protocol resources. Following the IANA Stewardship Transition in 2016, the IANA function is carried out by Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), a purpose-built organisation wholly owned by ICANN.
With regard to Internet number resources, IANA's role is to allocate IP addresses and AS Numbers from the pools of unallocated resources to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) according to their needs, and to document protocol assignments made by the IETF. When an RIR requires more IP addresses for allocation or assignment within its region, IANA makes an additional allocation to the RIR. The five Regional Internet Registries have a Service Level Agreement with ICANN regarding provision of those IANA functions relating to Internet number resources (IP addresses and AS Numbers).
IANA does not make allocations directly to ISPs or End Users except in specific circumstances, such as allocations of multicast addresses or other protocol-specific needs.
The policies under which the IANA role is carried out are referred to as Global Addressing Policies, and must be agreed to by all of the five RIR communities. Any new policy proposal must go through the Policy Development Process in each RIR and be ratified by each community, and this process will then be reviewed by the ASO Address Council (ASO AC) before the new global policy is adopted.
More information:
On 22 April 2014, the RIPE NCC handed over 5,376 returned legacy IPv4 addresses to IANA. This is the second time the RIPE NCC has returned legacy IPv4 addresses to IANA. For more information, please see the original news item and related documents.
The RIPE NCC has published a section on its website that provides background information on the IANA functions, the role of stewardship of IANA and the RIPE NCC’s relationship to IANA.
On Friday 14 March, the United States Government announced that it intends to transition stewardship of key Internet functions (including the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, or IANA) to the global multi-stakeholder community. It has asked ICANN to facilitate, in consultation with the global multi-stakeholder community, the development of a proposal for the transition.
In accordance with ripe-436, "Global Policy for the Allocation of the Remaining IPv4 Address Space", the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has today allocated the final five /8 blocks of IPv4 address space to the five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs).