LACNIC (the Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Centre) is the Regional Internet Registry responsible for allocating and managing IP addresses and Autonomous System Numbers across Latin America and the Caribbean. Headquartered in Montevideo, Uruguay, it serves 33 territories and operates as a membership-based non-profit.
LACNIC is one of five Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) worldwide. Each RIR receives blocks of Internet number resources from IANA and distributes them within its own service region:
- AFRINIC — Africa and parts of the Indian Ocean
- APNIC — Asia-Pacific
- ARIN — North America and parts of the Caribbean
- LACNIC — Latin America and most of the Caribbean
- RIPE NCC — Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia
This article explains where LACNIC came from, what it actually does day to day, who its members are, and how its policies get made.
What Does LACNIC Actually Do?
LACNIC’s core function is the stewardship of Internet number resources, but its work extends well beyond handing out addresses.
Resource allocation. LACNIC allocates IPv4 and IPv6 address blocks and Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) to ISPs, businesses, universities, and governments in its region. Every allocation follows needs-based policies developed by the community.
The WHOIS registry. LACNIC maintains a public WHOIS database recording which organisation holds which IP block. Network operators, security teams, and law enforcement rely on it daily to trace traffic and resolve abuse complaints.
Routing security. LACNIC operates RPKI (Resource Public Key Infrastructure) services that let networks cryptographically verify route announcements, reducing the risk of route hijacking.
DNS infrastructure. Through its +Raíces programme, LACNIC deploys copies of DNS root servers across the region, making the Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean more resilient to outages elsewhere in the world.
Training and community development. LACNIC runs technical workshops, IPv6 deployment training, and policy forums, and supports regional research through initiatives like the FRIDA programme.
How Are LACNIC's Policies Made?
LACNIC operates on a bottom-up, self-regulation model. The rules governing resource management are not written by LACNIC staff or its board — they are proposed, debated, and approved by the community through the Policy Development Process (PDP).
The PDP is open to anyone, member or not. Proposals are discussed on public mailing lists and at LACNIC’s twice-yearly public policy forums, and are adopted by consensus. Objections must be backed by technical reasoning; simple disagreement is not enough to block a change. All adopted policies are published in the LACNIC Policy Manual, the authoritative document governing resource management in the region.
This open model is common to all five RIRs and is a defining feature of how Internet number resources are governed globally.
When Was LACNIC Founded?
LACNIC’s founding happened in three stages, which is why you’ll see different dates cited:
- August 22, 1999 — The founding agreement was signed in Santiago, Chile, during the second ICANN meeting, by organisations affiliated with ECOM-LAC. Their case was simple: Latin American IP addresses should be managed by a Latin American entity, not by ARIN in North America, which handled the region’s allocations at the time.
- 2001 — LACNIC was formally constituted, with administrative headquarters in Montevideo, Uruguay, and technical infrastructure hosted at the NIC.br facilities in São Paulo, Brazil.
- October 2002 — ICANN officially recognised LACNIC as a Regional Internet Registry at its Shanghai meeting, and LACNIC began independent operations.
- August 22, 1999 — The founding agreement was signed in Santiago, Chile, during the second ICANN meeting, by organisations affiliated with ECOM-LAC. Their case was simple: Latin American IP addresses should be managed by a Latin American entity, not by ARIN in North America, which handled the region’s allocations at the time.
Since starting operations, LACNIC has distributed more than 180 million IPv4 addresses across the region.
LACNIC and IPv4 Exhaustion
On June 10, 2014, LACNIC reached its final /10 block of IPv4 addresses and entered its exhaustion phase, triggering much stricter allocation rules such as the slow-start policy for new ISPs. On August 19, 2020, LACNIC announced complete exhaustion of its available IPv4 pool.
Since then, organisations needing IPv4 space have two main options: acquire addresses through policy-compliant transfers (intra-regional since 2016, inter-RIR since 2020), or deploy IPv6. LACNIC has invested heavily in the second path — its training programmes and deployment support have helped make Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador some of the strongest IPv6 adopters in the world.
Frequent Asked Questions
Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Centre (in Spanish: Registro de Direcciones de Internet para América Latina y Caribe).
Montevideo, Uruguay, with technical infrastructure also hosted in São Paulo, Brazil.
33 territories across Latin America and the Caribbean. Some Caribbean territories fall under ARIN instead.
ICANN coordinates the global Internet naming and numbering systems at the top level; LACNIC is one of five regional registries that manage number resources within a specific geographic region. IANA (operated under ICANN) allocates large blocks to the RIRs, which distribute them locally.
Yes. LACNIC entered its exhaustion phase in June 2014 and announced complete IPv4 exhaustion in August 2020. New IPv4 space is now available only through transfers or waiting lists.
