For over 30 years, the Internet Society has been working toward an Internet for everyone.
As a global charitable organization, we work with our community of over 100,000 like-minded people and partners who understand that the Internet is a critical resource that people should have access to and that we must protect.
We understand the value that the Internet brings because we were founded by the people who helped build it.
To reach another person on the Internet you have to type an address into your computer - a name or a number. That address has to be unique so computers know where to find each other. ICANN helps coordinate these unique identifiers across the world. Without that coordination we wouldn't have one global Internet.
ICANN was formed in 1998. It is a nonprofit public-benefit corporation with participants from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. It helps promote competition and develop policy on the Internet’s unique identifiers.
ICANN doesn’t control content on the Internet. It cannot stop spam and it doesn’t deal with access to the Internet. But through its coordination role of the Internet’s naming system, it does have an important impact on the expansion and evolution of the Internet.
Think about how heavily you rely on the Internet. Communication, commerce, administration, entertainment - the Internet plays a key role in all of this and more.
We operate in the engine room of the World Wide Web. We provide the IP addresses that we all use to connect to the Internet. We also support the Internet community at large via technical co-ordination and representation in Internet governance. This is a very simplistic account, but more details about the RIPE NCC are available.