Brief Guide to JPNIC Information Services
           (Feb, 1996)

        Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC)
        Mansui Bldg. 3F, 2-9-18 Kanda-Surugadai
        Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101, Japan


JPNIC is a country NIC of Japan. All information concerning JP domain names,
IP network numbers, name servers, contact persons, and network providers in
Japan are collected into the JPNIC database to be retrieved via whois
service. JPNIC cooperates with InterNIC to keep the JPNIC database and the
InterNIC database consistent and up to date.

Here is an example of how to retrieve information from the JPNIC database
with whois. If you want to know what domain name "ABC University" has,
execute a whois command on your machine as follows:

  % whois -h whois.nic.ad.jp ABC/e

This command may produce a lot of summary lines including other information
such as IP addresses, but you will find a domain name if it has one. After
getting the domain name ABC.AC.JP, it's best to check the full content of
the record with the following command (if there is only one entry under
"ABC," whois generates its full content directly):

  % whois -h whois.nic.ad.jp ABC.AC.JP/e

If you can not find a word "Connected" in the line beginning with "[State]",
you can not reach the domain. Even if you find the word, some domains cannot
be reached depending on the configuration of communication circuit.

JPNIC whois has similar functions to InterNIC whois. Further information
related to the functions can be obtained by executing the following command.

  % whois -h whois.nic.ad.jp HELP/e

If your machine doesn't have whois, use telnet instead as follows:

  % telnet whois.nic.ad.jp 43
  [ connecting messages... ]
  ABC/e

If, unfortunately, you don't have direct Internet connectivity, you can
send a request via electronic mail as follows:

  % mail mail-server@nic.ad.jp
  whois ABC/e

If you can and want to read them in Japanese, omit trailing "/e."

JPNIC database is for network operation. It includes "point of contact" data
to facilitate location of information but is NOT intended to be a general
directory.  (Don't ask us your friend's address, please.)

All of the domain names under JP can be obtained from JPNIC via two
methods, anonymous ftp and electronic mail as follows:

  % ftp ftp.nic.ad.jp
  Name: ftp
  Password: your_mail_address
  ftp> get pub/jpnic/domain-list-e.txt

  % mail mail-server@nic.ad.jp
  send jpnic/domain-list-e.txt

Within the list, domains that are not connected are enclosed by parentheses.
If you can't find a name in the list (as well as whois), it doesn't have a
domain name under JP. Most universities of BITNET Japan don't use JP domain
names yet so they are reachable via a gateway but don't appear in the list.
JPNIC database only maintains the third level of JP domain names, so you
can't find any organizations hidden under the third level of a JP domain.

JPNIC also provides various information by gopher and WWW servers.  If you
have direct Internet connectivity, you can access to the gopher server
by the following command.

  % gopher gopher.nic.ad.jp

To access the WWW server, open URL

  http://www.nic.ad.jp/index.html

on your WWW viewer.