High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Internet uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to associate the names of computers with their numeric IP addresses and with other information. The top level of the domain name hierarchy, the DNS root, contains the top-level domains that appear as the suffixes of all Internet domain names. The official DNS root is administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). In addition, several organizations operate alternative DNS roots (often referred to as alt roots). These alternative domain name systems operate their own root nameservers and administer their own specific name spaces consisting of custom top-level domains.