History of ICANN

Some milestones in the history of the ICANN and predecessor organizations include the following:

• 1983: IANA is created as a result of Jon Postel's work administering IP address assignment as a contractor to Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
• 1996-97: The Internet Society and IANA creates the International Ad Hoc Committee. Its purpose is to develop a new model for governing top-level domains.
• 1997: U.S. commits to privatizing DNS management.
• 1998: After extensive international discussion and consideration of proposed solutions, ICANN is incorporated as a nonprofit, public-benefit corporation. Soon after, ICANN takes over management of IANA functions.
• 2000: ICANN contracts with U.S. Department of Commerce to perform IANA functions.
• 2000-2002: First expansion of generic top-level domains adds seven new gTLDs.
• 2003-2011: Second round of gTLD expansion adds an additional seven.
• 2012-2017: Third round of gTLD expansion adds over 1,200 new gTLDs.
• 2016: ICANN ends contract with U.S. government.
• 2017: ICANN begins operation following a global multistakeholder model.