Who is ARIN?
Since December 22, 1997, ARIN has been the authorized administrator of IPv4 IP address allocations and services in North America. ARIN is one of five regional Internet address registries (“RIRs”), all operating under the authority of ICANN. ARIN obtained this authorization through a delegation from InterNIC, which previously handled the assignment and administration of domain names and IP addresses. InterNIC itself was organized by the National Science Foundation and Network Solutions, Inc. (a private company awarded the government contract to provide IP address services) in 1993. Before 1993, IP addresses were assigned through the Internet Assigned Names and Numbers Authority (“IANA”). Under InterNIC and IANA, Internet service providers (“ISPs”) and certain end users were assigned IP address blocks directly, subject only to industry accepted best practices and Internet community standards. There were no contractual obligations between the registries and these “legacy IP address holder
