ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers – was formed in 1998. It is a not-for-profit partnership of people from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable.
It promotes competition and develops policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers. ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet.
has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation,
protocol identifier assignment, generic (gTLD) and
country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions.
These services were originally performed under U.S. Government contract by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other entities. ICANN now performs the IANA function.