When I started learning about the Internet, I found out that there are Network Information Centers (NIC) for the various geographical regions. At that time, I only knew APNIC (Asia Pacific), ARIN (North America), RIPE NCC (Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre - Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia) and LACNIC (Latin America and Caribbean Network Information Centre). Now, there's more!

What do I use it for? Mainly, I use it to find out what companies are certain IP addresses from - using the respective registry's whois service.

Whois for various NICs: