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Home > Regional Internet Registry


A Regional Internet Registry (RIR) is an organization that oversees the registration and allocates IP addresses in a certain region of the world. Namely there are currently 4 registries, all overseen by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA):

Currently Africa is divided between the four existing RIRs, though there is an emerging registry for the region, AfriNIC. It has not yet been fully ratified by IANA, though looks likely to be so in the near future.

Collectively the RIRs form part of the Numbers Resource Organization [1] formed as a body to represent their collective interests and ensure that policy statements are coordinated globally.

IANA delegates the allocation of IPv4 addresses to RIRs in large chunks (typically /8 or more at a time), and the RIRs then follow their own policies for address allocation. They typically further delegate address assignment to Internet Service Providers in small chunks, such as /19 and /20s.

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