Ever wonder where public IP’s come from? The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority or IANA (http://www.iana.org) is responsible for the global coordination of IP addresses. IANA coordinates with 5 regional internet registries or RIR:

* ARIN (North America)
* AfriNIC (Africa)
* APNIC (Asia/Pacific Region)
* LACNIC (Latin America and some Caribbean Islands)
* RIPE NIC (Europe, Middle East, Central Asia)

IANA also administers the 13 root DNS servers. IANA is a department of ICANN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN) or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

Public IPv4 and IPv6 IP addresses are assigned by ARIN or the American Registry for Internet Numbers (http://www.arin.net) for Canada, many Caribbean and North Atlantic islands, and the United States. ARIN in turn then assigns IP space to large ISP’s who will then give them out to their customers. ARIN is a nonprofit organization.

How has your experience been in trying to get new IP’s from an ISP? Share your comments in this blog.