According to abbreviationfinder, IANA stands for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Internet Number Assignment Authority: Entity that oversees global IP Address assignment, Autonomous System Number assignment, root zone management in the Domain Name System (DNS), media types, and other symbols and Internet Protocol related numbers. IANA is operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, also known as ICANN.
Prior to the creation of ICANN for this purpose, IANA was primarily managed by Jon Postel at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, under a contract this institute had with the United States Department of Defense. States, until ICANN was created to take over the responsibility under a US Department of Commerce contract.
History
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) is the body charged with coordinating some of the key elements that keep the Internet running smoothly. While the Internet is known to be a global network free of central coordination, there is a technical need for some key parts of the Internet to be globally coordinated – and this coordination function is carried out by the IANA. The IANA is one of the oldest institutions on the Internet, its activities dating back to the 1970s. Today it is operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, an internationally organized non-profit organization established by the Internet community to help coordinate IANA’s areas of responsibilities.
The IANA was established informally as a reference to various technical functions of the ARPANET, which the Institute of Information Sciences performed for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), the Agency for Defense Advanced Research Projects, of the Department of Defense. United States defense.
On March 26, 1972, Vint Cerf and Jon Postel called for the establishment of a catalog number in RFC 322. Network administrators were asked to submit a note or make a phone call describing the feature numbers and the socket of the network service programs on each host. This catalog was later published as RFC 433 in December 1972. In it Postel first proposed official port number assignments for network services and suggested a specific administrative function, which he called a czar, to keep track of.
The first reference to the IANA name in the RFC series is in RFC 1060, published in 1990, but the role, and the term, was well established long before that; RFC 1174 says that “Throughout its history, the Internet system has employed the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)…”, and RFC 1060 lists a long series of previous editions of itself, beginning with RFC 349.
Mission
The IANA team is responsible for the operational aspects of coordinating the Internet’s unique identifiers and maintaining the trust of the community to provide these services in an impartial, responsible and efficient manner.
Exercise
Specifically, IANA assigns and maintains unique codes and numbering systems that are used in the technical standards (“protocols”) that power the Internet. The various IANA activities can be grouped into three categories:
- Domain Names– The IANA manages the DNS root, the.int and.arpa domains, and an IDN practices resource.
- Number Resources– IANA coordinates the global pool of IP and AS numbers, registering them with the Regional Internet Registries.
- Protocol mapping– Internet protocol numbering systems are controlled by the IANA, in conjunction with standards bodies.
The IANA is one of the oldest institutions on the Internet, its activities dating back to the 1970s. The organization is operated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, an internationally organized non-profit organization established by the Internet community to help coordinate IANA’s areas of responsibilities.
IANA policy
The IANA does not seek to directly establish the policy by which it operates, instead it applies the agreed policies and principles in a neutral and responsible manner. Making use of the forums directive provided by ICANN, policy development for domain name and IP address operations is brought to the various stakeholders. ICANN has a structure of supporting organizations that help decide how ICANN is projected, and in turn how IANA is developed. Internet protocol development, which often dictates how protocol assignments should be handled, is run within the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Engineering Steering Group, and the Internet Architecture Board.
To improve its operations, IANA actively participates in outreach activities as well. As well as ICANN forums, IANA participates in meetings and discussions with TLD operators, Regional Internet Registries, and other relevant communities. The Authority provides an open attendance service at IETF meetings to allow personal interaction with the largest community of users – protocol developers.
Responsibilities
The IANA is largely responsible for assigning globally unique names and numbers used in Internet protocols that are published as RFC documents. These documents describe methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the operation of the Internet and Internet-connected systems. IANA also maintains a close relationship with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the RFC editorial team on compliance. of this function.
In the case of the two major Internet namespaces, namely IP addresses and domain names, additional administrative policy and delegation to subordinate administrations is required due to the distributed, multi-tiered use of these resources.
IP addresses
The IANA delegates IP address block assignments to Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). Each RIR assigns addresses for a different area of the world. Collectively the RIRs have created the Number Resource Organization formed as a body to represent their collective interests and ensure that policy statements are coordinated globally.
RIRs divide their pools of assigned addresses into smaller blocks and delegate their respective regions of operation to Internet service providers and other organizations.
Domain names
The IANA manages the data at the root nameservers, which form the top of the DNS tree hierarchy. This task is to liaise with the top-level domain operators, the root nameserver operators, and the ICANN policy-making apparatus.
ICANN also operates the.int registry for international treaty organizations, the.arpa zone for Internet infrastructure purposes, including reverse DNS service, and other critical zones, such as root-servers.
Protocol parameters
The IANA manages many parameters of the IETF protocols. Examples include Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) names, actions, and character encodings recommended for use on the Internet. This task is carried out under the supervision of the Internet Architecture Board, and the agreement that governs the work is published in RFC 2860.
