Authority over IANA & IP #s was Re: 206.82.160.0/22

Fri Sep 22 22:44:29 UTC 1995

> 
> I'm puzzled why anyone would think that, these days, IANA is under
> US DoD authority.  If IANA were under any US Goverment authority,
> it would be NSF.  But IANA is appointed by the IAB which is not
> under US gov authority except to the extent that it has ties to
> ISOC and ISOC is incorporated in the US.
> 
> Like most "authority" in the Internet, IANA controls the IP address
> space because it is to everyone's advantage to cooperate.  Anyone can
> get up a machine and use any IP address they want, they will just have
> a lot of trouble talking to anyone else if they don't coordinate with
> IANA (or actually the registries to whom IANA has delegated almost all
> the day to day coordination activities).
>

Hell, I kinda appreciated the hijack discussion myself.  :-)

- paul