Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the entity 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. IANA is a department operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, also known as ICANN.

Prior to the establishment of ICANN for this purpose, IANA was administered primarily by Jon Postel at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of the University of Southern California (USC), 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.

Read more about Internet Assigned Numbers Authority:  Responsibilities, Oversight, History

Famous quotes containing the words assigned, numbers and/or authority:

    As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn’t make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting—the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.
    Saul Bellow (b. 1915)

    And when all bodies meet
    In Lethe to be drowned,
    Then only numbers sweet
    With endless life are crowned.
    Robert Herrick (1591–1674)

    The government, which is the supreme authority in states, must be in the hands of one, or of a few, or of the many. The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest.
    Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)