ICANN, California

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) controls the domain name system on the internet, and is based in an office park building in Playa Vista, on the west side of Los Angeles. This role used to be part of the federal government, and it was for years famously managed by one person, John Postel, who worked at the Information Sciences Institute, run by USC, and located nearby in Marina del Rey. The new location for ICANN is in office park in the large master-planned redevelopment project known as Playa Vista, the former site of Hughes Aircraft. The building housing ICANN is in a complex with the headquarters for the computer cabling and accessory company Belkin, and the USC Institute for Creative Technologies.