What Is an RIR? Regional Internet Registries Explained

The first encounter usually goes like this: you look up who holds an IP prefix, and the answer names an organization you have never heard of — RIPE NCC, ARIN, or APNIC. Then the questions start. Is that the company's ISP? A regulator? Do you need to join one before your network can exist?

It is none of those, exactly — and the confusion is understandable, because a Regional Internet Registry sits in a layer of the Internet most people never interact with directly.

Definition Box: A Regional Internet Registry (RIR) is a membership-based organization that manages and registers Internet number resources — IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses, and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) — for a defined region of the world. There are five RIRs. An RIR is not an ISP, not a regulator, and not a standards body.

What Is an RIR?

A Regional Internet Registry is an organization responsible for managing and registering Internet number resources within a specific part of the world.

The resources under its administration come in three families:

IPv4 addresses — the 32-bit addressing system the Internet still largely runs on
IPv6 addresses — the much larger successor address space
Autonomous System Numbers — the identifiers networks use in interdomain routing

Network operators usually interact with a registry when they need address space, an ASN, or changes to resource registration data — for example, updating contacts after a company restructure, or transferring a block to another holder.

Globally, there are exactly five RIRs. Each is funded primarily through membership and resource-service fees, and each develops its allocation policies through an open, community-driven process rather than unilateral decisions.

Why Do RIRs Exist?

Internet routing depends on globally coordinated numbering. If two unrelated networks both claim 203.0.113.0/24, or both present themselves to the world as AS64500, other networks cannot tell them apart — and the routing system has no reliable way to decide who is who.

So uniqueness has to be administered somewhere. Doing it in one central office for the entire planet would not scale, so the system is hierarchical:

White-Face Xiaolu carries a blank resource card through a simple three-level arrangement from a global pool to regional receiving trays and a local drawer.

Internet number resources move from global coordination through regional registries and local registries to network operators.

Without this coordination, multiple networks could claim the same address space or the same ASN, making global routing unreliable. The registry system exists so that, at every level, there is exactly one organization whose records say who holds which numbers.

How Does the RIR System Work?

IANA: the global pool

At the top sits IANA (the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), which coordinates the global pools of IPv4 address space, IPv6 address space, and ASN ranges. End networks almost never apply to IANA directly — its role is to allocate large blocks downward to the five regional registries.

RIRs: regional administration

Each registry then:

allocates or assigns resources to members and eligible end users
registers who holds which resources
maintains the regional databases other networks query
implements the policies its community develops

One distinction matters more than the rest: RIRs do not normally control how packets travel across the Internet. Their role is resource administration, registration, and policy coordination. A registry can tell you who holds a prefix; it does not carry your traffic.

The distribution chain

In practice, resources flow downward: IANA allocates large blocks to the registries; the registries allocate to LIRs and assign to eligible end users; LIRs in turn assign address space to their own customers.

What Are the Five RIRs?

RIR	Service region
AFRINIC	Africa
APNIC	Asia Pacific
ARIN	United States, Canada, and parts of the Caribbean and North Atlantic
LACNIC	Latin America and much of the Caribbean
RIPE NCC	Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia

Each maintains its own policy framework, fee schedule, and membership model, and coordinates with the others through the Number Resource Organization (NRO).

White-Face Xiaolu turns a small central table connected to five separate receiving trays, representing five independent regional registries.

The five RIRs serve different regions while coordinating as part of the global registry system.

RIPE NCC deserves a closer look here, because it is the registry for our own service region. Network operators in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia can become RIPE NCC members and request Internet number resources under RIPE policies. RIPE NCC vs LIR Sponsorship examines what that membership actually involves.

What Resources Does an RIR Manage?

An RIR manages three different families of Internet number resources, each with a different role in a network.

White-Face Xiaolu sorts a small stack of address cards, a larger branching sheet, and a round identity token into three compartments.

IPv4 addresses, IPv6 addresses, and ASNs are related resources, but they are not interchangeable.

IPv4 addresses

Today, obtaining IPv4 space is very different from the early Internet. IANA exhausted its regular IPv4 free pool in 2011, when one final /8 was distributed to each RIR; recovered IPv4 space can still be redistributed under the post-exhaustion mechanism. At the registry level, each RIR has since run out of, or heavily restricted, its remaining free pool. IPv4 is still obtained — through transfers between holders, recovered pools, or assignments from providers — but almost never as a fresh allocation from an untouched pool. Commercial leasing also allows networks to use address space without acquiring the registration behind it. What Is IPv4? covers the exhaustion story in depth, and IPv4 Leasing Below /24 explains what a lease does and does not give you.

IPv6 addresses

The IPv6 address space is vast by design, and registries continue to allocate it to LIRs and eligible networks under straightforward policies. If you are planning a new network today, IPv6 is where allocations are still routine. What Is IPv6? explains the format and the reasoning behind its size.

Autonomous System Numbers

An ASN identifies a single autonomous network — one routing domain under one policy — participating in interdomain routing, most commonly through BGP. Registries allocate or assign ASNs to members and eligible end users, which is the first administrative step toward running your own routing domain. What Is an ASN? is the natural next stop.

What Other Services Do RIRs Provide?

Beyond the resources themselves, registries operate infrastructure that supports how those resources are used. The most important example is RPKI: it provides the cryptographic infrastructure for validating resource authorizations. Each registry operates the RPKI certificate system for its region, and network operators use it to create Route Origin Authorizations (ROAs), which state which ASNs are authorized to originate their prefixes. What Is RPKI? and What Is a ROA? cover how that layer is used.

RPKI is not a fourth category of Internet number resource. It is authorization infrastructure built on top of the IPv4, IPv6, and ASN registrations described above.

What Is an LIR?

A Local Internet Registry (LIR) is an organization that receives and manages Internet number resources through an RIR.

In the RIPE NCC service region, members operate LIR accounts through which they request and manage resources. A member may hold more than one LIR account, and annual contributions are charged per account — so "member" and "LIR" are closely related, but not strictly the same thing.

Typical LIRs include:

ISPs
hosting providers
cloud providers
large enterprises
network infrastructure companies

But an organization does not always need to operate its own LIR account to obtain certain Internet number resources. In the RIPE NCC service region, a sponsoring LIR can handle the administrative relationship between an end user and the registry — including applications, record maintenance, and policy compliance — while the end user holds the resources in their own name.

For many smaller networks, that distinction decides the entire budget: direct membership means sign-up fees, annual fees, and compliance work; sponsorship reduces the administrative overhead of maintaining a direct RIR membership relationship. Why Startups Don't Need RIPE Membership weighs the two paths.

What Information Is Stored in RIR Databases?

Exact registry and routing-database models differ between RIRs. In the RIPE Database, for example, you may encounter:

inetnum / inet6num   IP address ranges
aut-num              autonomous systems
organisation         resource holders
person / role        contacts
mntner               maintainers (who may change objects)
route / route6       routing intentions for filtering

Other registries organize similar information differently — ARIN, for instance, separates its registration Whois/RDAP service from its IRR database, which uses RPSL objects of this kind.

These records split into two roles. Registration objects document resource holders, contacts, and administrative control. IRR objects such as route and route6 can additionally describe routing intent and may be used to build routing filters — What Is an IRR Route Object? explains that use in depth.

One caution belongs in bold: neither type of record makes a route reachable by itself. Reachability is produced elsewhere, by BGP and by the networks that choose to accept your announcements.

Does an RIR Control BGP Routing?

No.

The registry layer manages number resource registration, policies, databases, and services such as RPKI. But none of that decides how packets travel. Actual packet flow happens through a completely separate chain:

Receiving an ASN or IP resources does not automatically make a network reachable. The resource must still be announced through BGP by an appropriately configured network, with routing policy, upstream connectivity, and propagation working as separate concerns. BGP Basics and What Happens After You Get an ASN walk through that machinery.

White-Face Xiaolu holds a registry ledger in one hand, while packets travel along a separate path of interconnected networks in the other.

The registry records who holds which numbers; BGP and your upstreams decide what is actually reachable.

How Is an RIR Different From IANA or an ISP?

IANA coordinates Internet number resources at the global level, maintaining the pools the regional registries draw from. RIRs administer those resources within their service regions, deciding — under community policy — who receives allocations.

A useful rule of thumb: if the question is "which top-level address blocks has IANA allocated to each RIR?", that is an IANA-level question. If the question is "can my organization get an ASN?", that is decided by your regional registry's policy.

An ISP, by contrast, is in the connectivity business:

	RIR	ISP
Allocates and registers Internet number resources	Yes	Sometimes, downstream
Provides Internet connectivity	No	Yes
Maintains the regional registry	Yes	No
Assigns addresses to end customers	At the policy level	Often, from its own space

The core sentence: an RIR helps establish who holds Internet number resources; an ISP provides network connectivity. You pay an ISP to carry your traffic; you interact with a registry to hold the numbers your network is identified by. For transit and peering specifically, Transit vs Peering explains the difference.

White-Face Xiaolu moves a blank resource card from a quiet filing cabinet onto a small cart entering a road that carries blank packets.

An RIR keeps the administrative record; an ISP provides the connectivity that carries traffic.

Do You Need to Join an RIR to Get an ASN?

Not necessarily. Whether membership is required depends on the RIR and the resource being requested.

In the RIPE NCC service region, there are two common paths for eligible resources:

Option 1 — become a RIPE NCC member and operate an LIR account: membership fees, your own resource requests, and responsibility for policy compliance.
Option 2 — obtain independent resources as an End User through a sponsoring LIR, such as an ASN, without joining as a member yourself.

How to Get Your Own ASN compares the routes in practice, and ASN Cost breaks down the budget either way.

What Happens After You Receive Resources From an RIR?

Receiving Internet number resources is the administrative starting line, not the finish:

White-Face Xiaolu pushes a cart carrying a blank resource card along a winding path past a registry drawer, a seal, and two gates before packets reach an open road.

Registration, authorization, upstream connectivity, BGP, announcement, and outside verification are separate stages.

Each step can succeed or fail independently — which is why "I got the ASN, but nothing is reachable" is such a common troubleshooting report. What Happens After You Get an ASN covers the full sequence.

RIR registration is therefore one part of operating an Internet network, not the entire process.

FAQ

How many RIRs are there?

Five: AFRINIC, APNIC, ARIN, LACNIC, and RIPE NCC.

Is RIPE an RIR?

Strictly speaking, no. RIPE NCC is the registry — the organization that allocates and registers resources. RIPE is the open community where policies are proposed and discussed before the RIPE NCC implements them. When people say "RIPE gave me an ASN," they almost always mean the RIPE NCC.

Can an individual get an ASN?

Yes, in some RIR regions, individuals can qualify for an ASN. Depending on the registry, they may apply directly or work through an eligible sponsoring organization. Requirements vary, so check the current policy for your region.

Is an RIR the same as ICANN?

No. ICANN coordinates the broader Internet identifier system, and the IANA functions sit within that ecosystem. RIRs are independent regional organizations focused on Internet number resources. They cooperate, but they are separate institutions with separate governance.

Does getting an ASN mean I can use BGP?

Not by itself. You also need prefixes that you are authorized to announce, a router or BGP-capable platform, at least one upstream or peer willing to exchange routes with you, and routing policy configured correctly. The ASN is the identity; BGP operation is everything built around it.

Do RIRs own IP addresses?

No. RIR policies generally do not treat Internet number resources as ordinary property; the precise legal and contractual treatment varies by registry and jurisdiction. Holders keep registrations that remain valid under the applicable policies — and in several regions, those registration rights can be transferred to other organizations, which is why an IPv4 aftermarket exists at all.

Can I choose which RIR to use?

Not freely. Your appropriate RIR is generally determined by the registry's service region and its eligibility rules, including where the network operates or where the resources will be used. You generally cannot simply choose any RIR based on price or preference.

In One Sentence

An RIR administers who holds IP addresses and ASNs in its region — but holding a registration and being reachable on the Internet are two different things.

Continue Reading

What Is an ASN? — the network identifier assigned through the registry system.
What Is IPv4? — the address space the registry system was built around.
What Happens After You Get an ASN — the full sequence from allocation to first announcement.
RIPE NCC vs LIR Sponsorship — membership versus sponsorship, side by side.
How to Choose a Sponsoring LIR: 8 Checks — what to verify before committing to a sponsor.
What Is RPKI? — the registry-operated authorization layer for your routes.