I'll bet most people have no idea how the internet works in regard to the millions of users around the world. In simple terms, who keeps track of internet addresses and issues new ones? Good old American initiative caused a California Computer Science researcher with the Southern California Information Science Institute, Jon Postel, to create the Internet Corporation for Assignment of Names and Numbers (Icann). There had been forerunners of Icann, all involved Postel. Postel's work at the Institute was funded by the US Department of Defense.