Who assigns IP addresses
The top-level organisation responsible for allocating entire pools of addresses is IANA.
Because of how network traffic is routed, RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) were created. RIRs allocate IP addresses to ISPs (internet providers), which in turn assign them to their customers.
Regional Internet Registries
There are five RIR organisations, each covering a geographic region of the world.
- ARIN — North America
- AFRINIC — Africa
- APNIC — Asia and the Pacific
- LACNIC — Latin America and the Caribbean
- RIPE — Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia
Map of RIR coverage
The map shows the geographic areas in which each RIR organisation allocates IP addresses.
IP addresses and domain names
IP address pools are one layer of addressing on the internet. The other one is domain names — human-readable names that point to specific IP addresses. Domains are handled by national registries and registrars, not by the RIR organisations.
If you want to search, check or compare domain names, take a look at DomainsNavigator — a tool for browsing and analysing internet domains.