Jump to main contents

History of Internet Resources Management in Japan

Focusing on Domain Name and IP Address

open all section menu
close all section menu

Internet Timeline
Japanese Page

Preface

History of Internet Resources Management in Japan - Focusing on Domain Name and IP Address was originally compiled in Japanese, and this is English translation.

The Internet was born in the United States, but it evolved and expanded, connecting many networks and engaging many more people all around the world. Internet resource management also started in US, but it too expanded, particularly with Country Code TLDs and Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). Japan has been involved in the Internet since late 1980s as one of the pioneers, and so it was involved in the expansion of resource management. This document follows the history of the Internet, focusing particularly on resource management. Many chapters describe what happened in Japan, while others describe global movements, though often from Japan's perspective.

In general, this history has been simply translated from the original version, but there is additional text in some parts to provide more context for readers less familiar with the Japanese situation. The entire English content was edited by Mr. Gerard Ross, the former Communication Manager at APNIC who also recently compiled the history of APNIC*1. The smoothness of the language is thanks to his effort, which the History Compilation Team appreciates very much.

We believe that Internet history from a country other than the US is an interesting and useful reference for people around the world. We do hope you enjoy it.

The Internet began as a network for a small community of researchers and engineers and has now become an everyday medium used by and familiar to people throughout the world. In addition to basic applications and user services, such as mail and file transfer services, more advanced and sophisticated offerings such as Web applications and cloud services are now emerging one after another.

Moreover, the new communication environment created by the Internet has gained such great power that it can contribute to the change of national regimes.

Against this backdrop, there is an active discussion of so-called Internet governance - how we should improve and develop Internet reliability and stability and within what sort of framework we should manage it.

Numbering and naming resources, such as Internet addresses (IP addresses) and domain names, support the very basis of the Internet, so the way these resources are managed is crucial to and fundamental for the sound development and operation of the Internet.

Smooth resource management directly influences the reliability and stability of the Internet as a whole and so is one of the most important themes of Internet governance. Therefore in any discussion of Internet governance, it is important to know how the current mechanism of resource management was established.

This document is a compilation of the history of resource management in Japan, focusing on the activities of JPNIC (Japan Network Information Center) and JPRS (Japan Registry Services).

JPNIC was formed by the Japanese Internet community to take the lead in resource management. Today JPNIC manages number resources, including IP addresses, and JPRS manages the JP domain name resources.

To compile this history, we made a number of revisions to “20 year history of JPNIC – Together with the Internet of Japan” issued in September 2013, and incorporated several additional reference materials. This sort of document usually presents events in chronological order, but here we describe the facts by topics to better trace the history of each event clearly. Therefore, this content can either be read in sequence, or dipped into for a particular area of interest.

We tried to present this history in such a way that it can explain the mechanism and background of resource management not only to experts on Internet resource management, but also to other regular people with no expert knowledge. We enjoyed a great deal of cooperation from many key players during this work, and we are profoundly grateful for their support.

Our hope is that this document will be of help to many people in understanding Internet resource management. Although we are confident that we have performed sufficient research into the contents to make them accurate, if you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at JPNIC <history-comment@nic.ad.jp>. We would also be happy to hear your opinions and feedback.

April 2015, History Compilation Team

Ver.1.0-April 2015 Chapter1 >>

*1 History of APNIC
https://www.apnic.net/about-APNIC/organization/history-of-apnic