ICANN is private (non-government) non-profit corporation with responsibility of supervising domain names on internet. It plays major monopolistic role in IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions. It was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States.
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ICANN is responsible for
- Coordination of global Internet’s systems of unique identifiers.
- Ensuring stable and secure operation of internet.
- Coordination of the Internet Protocol address spaces.
- Assignment of address blocks to regional Internet registries, for maintaining registries of Internet protocol identifiers, and for management of top-level domain name space (DNS root zone), which includes operation of root name servers.
- DNS policy development for internationalization of the DNS system.
- Introduction of new generic top-level domains (TLDs).