Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Centre

LACNIC's main functions are:

• Allocating IPv4 and IPv6 address space, and Autonomous System Numbers
• Maintaining the public Whois Database for the Latin American and Caribbean region
• Reverse DNS delegations
• Representing the interests of the Latin American and Caribbean Internet community on the global stage

Since 1993, academic organizations in Latin America like ENRED – Foro de Redes de América Latina y el Caribe, discussed the need of a register for Latin America, independent from the influence of the United States. In 1998 during an ENRED meeting in Panama including NIC-MX, this theme was discussed and they learned that another group formed by commercial organizations like CABASE — Cámara Argentina de Base de Datos y Servicio en Línea and e-COMLAC (Latin America and Caribbean Federation for Internet and Electronic Commerce), were also discussing the idea of a Latin American registry.[3]

On January 30, 1998, Ira Magaziner, then the senior adviser to President Clinton for policy development, released a discussion paper, known as the "green paper" after the DNS root authority incident. A revised version known as the "white paper" was released on June 5.[4] This paper proposed a new organization to handle internet resources (that later became ICANN). Following this release, a number of groups organized conferences to discuss its proposal and make suggestions, among them, the IFWP or International Forum for the White Paper.

IFWP organized four meetings, the last one in Buenos Aires, where several South Americans distinguished persons and organizations participated and got to know each other. Among them Oscar Messano, Anthony Harris and Edmundo Valente from CABASE, Fabio Marinho, member of the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and President of ASSESPRO – Associação Brasileira de Empresas de Software Serviços de Informática e Internet, Raimundo Beca - AHCIET – Asociación Hispanoamericana de Centros de Investigación y Empresas de Telecomunicaciones, Brasil, NIC México - Oscar Robles and German Valdez, y Julian Dunayevich, Raul Echeverria, ENRED.

Those organizations joined by eCOMLAC – Federación Latino Americana y Caribeña para Internet y el Comercio Electrônico, argumented that Latin American IPs addresses could be handled by a local entity and reached an agreement for its creation. Others persons participated in these early discussion, among the Eliezer Cadenas (ENRED), Fidel Vienegas (AHCIET), Raphael Mandarino (CGI.br).

Finally, the agreement for creation of LACNIC (Latin American and Caribbean IP Address Regional Registry), was signed in Santiago de Chile on August 22, 1999 during the second ICANN meeting.

An Interim Board was defined with six members:

• AHCIET – Raimundo Beca;
• CABASE – Jorge Plano, later substituted by Oscar Messano;
• CGI.br – José Luis Ribeiro;
• ENRED – Julian Dunayerich; later substituted by Raul Echeverria;
• NIC.mx – German Valdez;
• ECOMLAC – Fabio Marinho;

Next step, this LACNIC Interim Board submitted on August 26, 1999, this agreement to Esther Dyson, then Chair of ICANN Interim Board for ICANN approval.

A Business Plan of this new organization was developed and presented to ARIN, the organization responsible for this region at that moment. Statutes were created and it was decided that LACNIC headquarters would be in Montevideo, with technical people and equipment in São Paulo, in NIC.br premises.

LACNIC, being in full conformance with the criteria[5] for a new regional Internet registry as set forth by the Internet registry community and ICANN, was formally recognized by ICANN during its Shanghai meeting in 2002.[6]

LACNIC was established in 2001, with administrative offices in Montevideo, Uruguay and technical facilities provided by CGI.br[7] of São Paulo.

Today, LACNIC has a total of over 8,500 members in the following categories:

1. Active Founding Members:
   • AHCIET (the Ibero American Association of Research Centers and Telecommunication Companies)
   • CABASE (the Argentine Chamber of Databases and Online Services)
   • CGI-Br (the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee)
   • eCOMLAC (the Latin American and Caribbean Federation for Internet and Electronic Commerce)
   • ENRED (the Network Forum for Latin America and the Caribbean)
   • NIC-Mx (NIC Mexico)
2. Active A Members

   Those who receive IP address space directly from LACNIC or indirectly through national registries NIC Brazil and NIC Mexico, as well as those who have received address space from ARIN corresponding to the address space allocated to LACNIC and who apply for admission.

3. Adhering Members:
   • Organizations based in the LAC region or that carry out their activities mainly in LAC, which are involved in Internet development and/or composed of Internet service providers, make a relevant contribution to Internet-related policies in the region, agree with the goals of LACNIC and apply for admission.
   • Organizations that manage IP addresses that are not part of the address space allocated to LAC and are geographically located in the LAC region.
   • Any person, company or institution designated as such by decision of the LACNIC Member Assembly in recognition of their activities in furtherance of LACNIC's goals.
   • Any natural or legal person who makes a significant financial contribution to support LACNIC.
   • Organizations that receive only an ASN do not become LACNIC members.

With the other RIRs, LACNIC is a member of the Number Resource Organization (NRO), which exists to protect the unallocated number resource pool, to promote and protect the bottom-up policy development process, and to be the focal point for input into the RIR system.

• Lacnic.net - official site.
• How to become a member , lacnic.net
• The Number Resource Organization , nro.net