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.
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On 1 February 2011, the IANA allocated two /8s of IPv4 address space to APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for the Asia Pacific region. This means that only five /8s of IPv4 address space are left in the IANA free pool and the "Global Policy for the Allocation of the Remaining IPv4 Address
5 February 2008 - On 4 February 2008, at around 17:00 (UTC), IANA introduced AAAA records for six of the root servers in the root server system. One of these servers is the K-root, k.root-servers.net (2001:7fd::1), which is managed by the RIPE NCC. This change allows the root zone to be queried o
In June 1998, the Executive Boards and Councils of each of the current Regional Internet Registries (APNIC, ARIN and RIPE NCC) reviewed the US Government White Paper at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/6_5_98dns.htm and welcomed it, especially the emphasis on self-administration for the I
RIPE NCC Statement