Talk:Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

Misc
While the Department of Commerce funds the operation of IANA by a private contractor, it is by no means clear that they have any authority to designate IANA except by common consent, since IANA (the role) has no formal authority over anyone. 18.24.0.120 19:25, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Key People (infobox)
Why is Jon Postel not in there? He's been gone for awhile now, but really the man WAS the IANA. And if that's not key, I don't know what is. I'm going to modify it and add him, and if you want to dispute it, go ahead, but I can't think of anyone else at IANA that fits notability criteria. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:C4B9:8D90:718B:3233:6DD7:B1E5 (talk) 05:40, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

IP addresses
I corrected the range used in the IPv6 statement but don't know how to add a reference. The IPv6 address space registry, which can be found at http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-address-space shows that the /3 for global unicast and the allocations to the RIRs are registered at: http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv6-unicast-address-assignments and the policy for these allocations is published at: http://www.icann.org/en/general/allocation-IPv6-rirs.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.0.36.118 (talk) 23:27, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

charsets
IANA seems to be the authority for specifing charsets / character sets names for HTML. Can someone comment on these? See http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets --Abdull 22:14, 23 December 2005 (UTC)
 * IANA operates hundreds of registries for all sorts of protocols. I changed the wording of the article to reflect this better. --kjd 20:42, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Charsets were added to IANA's responsibilities in RFC 1341, published in June 1992. Check Appendix F. Rules have since been updated multiple times. --Alvestrand 14:00, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Contracts
Mike St. Johns claims that the 1985 IANA contract was a subcontract from SRI/DCA to ISI for Jon's time

I think DoC funded IANA from the end of the DoD funding (see COOK report link) until ICANN took over. In fact, as I remember it, the existence of the DoC/ISI contract was used as a political lever to keep all the IANA functions together in one contract - "splitting it up would mean that we would have to recompete it - keeping it together, we can transfer it".

Will try to find a reference. Alvestrand 13:50, 15 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Found a good reference. The ICANN contract has the history. --Alvestrand 14:02, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Start of IANA
Multiple web sites claim that IANA started in 1972, but this is probably confusing it with the RFC Editor. Mike St. Johns says:


 * The date of interest is probably 1 Jan 82 with the flag day to swap to TCP/IP. Before that there wasn't really a numbers registry of any type.  BBN owned the numbers space on the ARPANet and the rest was mostly embedded inside the applicable protocols.  My guess is that the '72 date is probably when the first RFC was published and Jon took on the RFC editor role.

Alvestrand 13:51, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Superceded contracts (or not)
I reverted this edit:

The reason is that the two agreements described by the two paragraphs are actually between different parties; one is between USC/ISI (the university) and ICANN, the other is between the US government and ICANN. USC has as far as I know not relinquished its claim that it may hold rights to old IANA IPR; it's leased those rights to ICANN for the performance of the IANA function, but keeps carefully silent about any actual transfer of ownership. Any later agreement that supercedes this one would have to have USC/ISI as a party.

Tracing contracts is a pain in the posterior.... --Alvestrand 06:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

order of the sections
i had changed the order of the the sections. i put oversight and history at the begging and i got a message saying it was vandalism. i think thats not vandalism that is the way it is with other articles (puting history frist that is)

(i think this is what it should be)

1 History of IANA 2 Oversight

3 IANA's Responsibilities 3.1 IP Addresses 3.2 Domain Names 3.3 Protocol parameters 4 External links


 * The comment doesn't mention vandalism.. I didn't do the revert, but nonetheless don't agree with your reordering. I think IANA's responsibilities are more pertinent than its ancient history and oversight, and therefore think they should be first. Most people would want to read the article about IANA to find out what it does. --kjd 04:37, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I find this fascinating. Why do you consider (ancient) history and oversight (aka: power) less "pertinent"?  Surely the history of this is the meat of the matter, as its "responsibilities", if indeed they can even be called that, can be changed from moment to moment should those who have assumed responsibility for them (under the aegis of power that the US provides), a private company, choose to do so. The history clarifies this core matter whereas a listing of responsibilities is mute. Divorced from its history the geo-political perspective, something again central to the internet, would be lost.  LookingGlass (talk) 10:10, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Fine details - how does it work?
My zonealarm firewall just told me it had detected a new network (one that I was connected to). I checked the network IP address and it came back as IANA; does anyone have any idea why? I mean, shouldn't I just connect to a server at my ISP which draws on a unique-number bank to allocate my IP? Surely if this were normal I'd have seen it before... buh?

172.159.190.150 11:11, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Iana.jpg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 22:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Discussion re domain names at Talk:Northern Ireland
A discussion is taking place at the above page relating to what domain name or domain names whould be listed for Northern Ireland (if any). I am a participant in the discussion so do not wish to be seen to be canvassing here so I simply encourage more Editors to get involved at Talk: Northern Ireland. Frenchmalawi (talk) 17:24, 30 December 2012 (UTC)

Global?!?
The article uses the word Global throughout but actually seems to refer only to the USA, and specifically to US private companies. Can anyone clarify what global mandates if any these organisations actually have, the limitations of these mandates, and more interestingly how these could (and therefore might) change in the future? I am not calling for daydreaming here but for some setting out what is cast in stone in these matters and what is merely assumed by these organisations based on recent socio-economic and political realities. LookingGlass (talk) 05:24, 12 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Read "History" section regarding the creation of the Internet Protocol suite... Having defined the protocols and parameter fields within those protocols, the definition of what is appropriate values for the identifiers lies with the USG and the IETF.   In general, the administration of Internet identifiers has been relatively free of US Government meddling, but that does not mean the same thing as having the authority vested in truly international structures.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by TcomptonMA (talk • contribs) 13:06, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks TcomptonMA, I did as you suggested, but there are only 2 references to the Internet Protocol in the article. Also, and unusually, the History section comes at the end of the article, and is more of a hotch potch of facts than a cogent account. For myself, the history of all this, as sketched in the section above "Contracts", is the most interesting.  The section above "Start of the IANA" describes what to me would appear to be a more normal and accessible rendition for an article suited to a general readership, but appears to have been overwritten for some reason.  LookingGlass (talk) 09:58, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

IANA exists independently from simply a department of ICANN
Recent edit reverted because defined IANA only in the ICANN context; IANA exists as well as an IETF function as well, and this is performed by ICANN because of RFC 2860, not the IANA Functions contract from NTIA. The term IANA does not clearly referred to one or the other usage; it depends on context. TcomptonMA 13:33, 21 June 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by TcomptonMA (talk • contribs)


 * lease then change the relevant articles to reflect this citing the sources you rely upon that trump those already cited on the ICANN page. Please work to improve wiki as a whole rather than engaging in turf wars.  Thanks. LookingGlass (talk) 11:12, 26 June 2013 (UTC)


 * done. --TcomptonMA 02:38, 1 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by TcomptonMA (talk • contribs)

Iana disambiguation page
What about creating a redirect from a Iana disambiguation page as there already is an article on a Romanian town of the selfsame name? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.105.160.157 (talk) 10:34, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * There is already an IANA disambiguation page and a note at the top of the Iana article (the one about the Romanian town) that points people to the IANA page. Isn't that good enough? --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 00:26, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

IAB is not defined or linked
There is one reference to the IAB in the article, but this is neither defined nor linked to another article. What is it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.91.198.196 (talk) 13:06, 7 February 2015 (UTC)


 * ✅. IAB = Internet Architecture Board. I edited the article to use the full wikilinked name. --Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 11:35, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

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Strange IANA status could be clarified in this piece,cause we are not ALL techies (amazing)
While casually reading on the Internet structuring, etc. AS a non-specialist, I stumbled on this IANA thing and... Well, I may be a fool but have problems reconciling this: "IANA) is a standards organization" with this "Currently it is a function of ICANN, a nonprofit private American" with this (later): "the stewardship of IANA functions was officially transitioned to the private-sector". Is IANA a function(s) or an org AND if it an org, can an org be "posessed" by a corporation, be it nonprofit AND is ICANN still in the picture nervertheless... or other mysterious, unindentified-in-the-article, people (cause that's a PRETTY darn important job they've got there, IANA; just saying ;-) --66.158.157.129 (talk) 21:02, 15 February 2021 (UTC) Alainr345

Leaking my information
My information is bring leaked by a 12 year old he’s racist he’s doing it to others to 5.191.29.67 (talk) 17:20, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Empty Section
Section Protocol assignments appears to be empty. Suggest either deleting this section or adding information to it? ATMmachinePC (talk) 06:28, 23 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Found that this section had content but it was not reverted properly after vandalism so it lacked content, I've copy-pasted over what was there before. ATMmachinePC (talk) 00:37, 30 September 2023 (UTC)