Internet Assigned Numbers Authority

IANA is the organization that assigns whole blocks of IP addresses to specific purposes. So IP addresses that are not assigned to RIRs for allocation to ISPs will show as belonging to IANA.

This includes, but is not limited to, the IP address ranges allocated for private use:

10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255 172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255 192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255

No, your firewall is attempting to dazzle you with useless bullsh1t. The IP address in question is one set aside by IANA (10.0.0.0/8,127.0.0.0/8,

169.254.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16, and 224.0.0.0/4 being representative examples) for some purpose. Your firewall wants to claim to identify the source of packets (it can't do that accurately), and so provides intentionally misleading information.

It's this thing called an Internet. It's a group of private networks that allow you to see this news article. The coordination is done by the 'Internet Engineering Task Force' (also in Marina del Rey). They delegated the assignment of numbers (IP addresses, ports, protocols) to IANA. IANA then assigns (FOR EXAMPLE) the authority to allocate IP addresses to the (currently) 5 Regional Internet Registries (AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, and RIPE - respectively Africa, Asia/Pacific, North America, Latin American and the Caribbean, and Europe) who actually parcel out addresses to ISPs, companies, and governments. See the web page at

and the many documents at the IETF, especially RFC1180, RFC1519, and RFC1878, available from many places - try (replace the four zeros with the four digit document number).

Old guy