LOS ANGELES - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the North American Network Operators' Group, Inc. (NANOG). This agreement will help realize common objectives, promote two-way collaboration, strengthen both NANOG's and ICANN's community engagement initiatives, and build greater support for multistakeholder participation, the governance model of the Internet, according to the official website of ICANN. 

ICANN and NANOG have agreed to conduct joint technical engagement and outreach efforts at colleges and universities in the North America and the Caribbean regions, addressing issues of mutual interest, such as cybersecurity programs, informatics, computer science, and other network-related issues. They have also agreed to better support underserved communities in both regions. This includes exploring the possibility of creating joint scholarship and mentorship programs for university students.

NANOG's mission is to provide forums in the North American region for educating the Internet operations community. NANOG focuses its outreach efforts on the technologies and systems that make the Internet function: core routing and switching; Internet inter-domain routing; the domain name system; peering and interconnection; and Internet core security. The association covers issues that have a direct impact on Internet architecture, such as data centers and optical networking. NANOG has 620 members and serves over 900+ attendees during each tri-annual conference; and it is a professional association for Internet engineering and architecture organized as a non-profit membership organization.