5-7 Progress Report on ED Domain Name Experimental Project

(JP Domain Name Working Group)

One year has already passed since the ED domain registration began in February, 1999. During this period, JPNIC conducted an "ED domain name experimental project." In addition to conducting a review of JPNIC's own operations, the following activities were undertaken:

• Survey of schools and the Board of Education, by means of questionnaires and hearings
• ED domain name assignment at no charge (August 1 to November 30, 1999)

We received a large number of responses, permitting calculation of useful survey results. Currently, we are proceeding with summarization of the responses.

We would like to once again review the ED Domain Name Experimental Project and report some of the results that are being put together.

Project Summary

Because of recent rapid development of the Internet environment, and pilot use of the Internet in schools, introduction of the Internet into schools is making progress.

Also, educational guideline revisions by the Ministry of Education have created an urgency in providing schools with the environment necessary for utilization of the Internet. Consequently, domain name registration applications are expected to increase rapidly within a few years, as more schools become connected to the Internet.

With this in mind, JPNIC conducted a variety of examinations and subsequently established a new domain name space, the ED domain name. ED domain names can be registered by educational institutions in which students are educated and nurtured, up to and including high schools (secondary, elementary, and preschool institutions). On the other hand, there are many schools that share the same names, so it was expected that domain name requests from schools will duplicate in many cases. Also, connection to the Internet will intensify within a few years and will increase such duplication even more, and may distract from smooth registration operations.

For these reasons, a new domain name assignment method was introduced, based on the concept of "reserved domain names."

With this method, JPNIC will suggest pre-created domain names determined by using each school's name and location, and reserve the domain name as reflected by each school's wishes. These domain names can only be registered by the schools that have reserved them, and cannot be registered by any other schools. This method is to avoid duplication of requested domain names. However, schools may choose not to use the domain name that has been reserved for them. In this case, they can choose from and register other unregistered domain names. Considering these circumstances, the ED domain name experimental project was undertaken to verify the effectiveness of the newly established ED domain names.

Progress

This experimental project was undertaken with two main points in mind:

• By introducing reserved domain names, can registration applications of ED domain names be processed smoothly for more than 40,000 schools and other educational institutions?
• What are the some of the positive effects of establishing the new ED domain names?

Overviews of each point are presented in the following section.

Improved efficiency in registration processing with "reserved domain names"

It was verified that domain name registration processing by reserving pre-created domain names resulted in an improvement in efficiency.

In comparison with AC domain names, which have many functional similarities, processing time was approximately 4 times as efficient, on average. Also, it was shown that reserved domain names resulted in fewer corrections of application information errors on the application forms.

Questionnaire Results

A survey by questionnaire was conducted in November, 1999, to understand the situation regarding connection of primary, secondary and high schools to the Internet, and to understand the effectiveness of establishment of the ED domain names. We received about 1600 responses, out of approximately 5,000 questionnaires distributed.

It may take for some time to confirm the effectiveness of ED domain use, because it has not been long enough since its establishment. However, some responses in the questionnaires show that:

• Interchange between schools will be easier if the domain name is recognized as being that of a school
• It is easier to identify school names than geographical domain names
• Domain names became short and simple, which was an improvement

We may safely say that the effects originally expected are being recognized.

However, awareness levels of ED domain names, and of JPNIC, among people working in the education field are not especially high. We feel that we need to continue to provide information and other services through a variety of means.

Final results and data regarding the ED Domain Name Experimental Project will be reported at a later date, on our Web site and via other media.