introduction
Five RIRs are in charge of issuing ranges of Internet IP addresses to organizations.
IP (Internet Protocol) describes how hosts can send IP packets to each other. Packets are messages sent between a client and a server. A packet is sent to its destination using its IP address. A network contains a range of IP addresses.
what it is
Each public IP address has to be unique for IP addresses to work. Several organisations in the world control public IP addresses. Every public IP address range used in the Internet was given out by an RIR (Regional Internet Registry).
Five RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) assign ranges of IP addresses. The registries are
- AfriNIC (African Network Information Center). AfriNIC issues address ranges to organizations in the African continent.
- APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre). APNIC deals with Asia and the Pacific.
- ARIN (American Registry for Internet Numbers). ARIN deals with North America.
- LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry). LACNIC deals with South and Central America.
- RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre). RIPE issues address ranges to organizations in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.
These registries only deal with big organizations like ISPs (Internet Service Providers), telecommunication organisations and large corporations. Each big organization splits up its IP address range into subnets for their customers to use.
In the early days of the Internet an RIR used to issue whole networks from the IP network classes A, B or C. Now they issue CIDR.
what it isn't
where it is
history
