6.1 What is APNIC?

APNIC is an abbreviation for Asia Pacific Network Information Center. From the name it is clear that APNIC is closely related to JPNIC. The relation among the present international NIC is given below.

                          IANA
                            |
           +----------------+---------------------+
           |                |                     |
        RIPE NCC          APNIC               InterNIC
        (Europe)         (Asia pacific)       (North America)
                            |
                 +------+---+------+-----------+
                 |      |          |           |
               JPNIC  KRNIC      AUNIC        Other Countries*
              (Japan) (Korea)   (Australia)
            

IANA which is an abbreviation for Internet Assigned Numbers Authority is the committee for Internet society, and it not only assigns IP addresses but also allocates/controls various numbers and key-words. The allocations given by IANA are documented in the RFC named ASSIGNED NUMBERS. (Because of regular updates, please refer to the latest RFC.)

RIPE NCC (Europe), APNIC (Asia pacific) and InterNIC (North America) are under IANA. NIC is known as NCC (Network Coordination Center) in Europe. RIPE is an abbreviation for Reseaux IP Europeans. InterNIC controls the countries which are not covered by NIC. Therefore, the responsibility of InterNIC is not limited to North America only.

NIC of countries like JPNIC (Japan), KRNIC (Korea), AUNIC (Australia) are under APNIC. As the number of NIC organizations in Asia Pacific regions are still small, APNIC directly assigns the IP addresses to those countries that do not have NIC organizations.

6.2 Relation between JPNIC and APNIC

The IP addresses that JPNIC allocates to the organizations within Japan are actually assigned to JPNIC by APNIC which maintains the the block of IP addresses meant for Asia pacific regions. JPNIC applies for new block of addresses whenever there is a shortage. In this way the activities of JPNIC are closely related to APNIC.

APNIC started its activity as a pilot project from 93/9, and since then JPNIC is cooperating with it. In details, APNIC has its WG in JPNIC and out of the activities of APNIC, in particular, the members of APNIC-WG play an important role for allocating IP addresses. NIC of each country takes part in APNIC activities and the members of Japan are mainly in charge of assigning IP addresses. KRNIC is in charge of Information Service. In the same way, AUNIC maintains the DNS of APNIC.

Although, JPNIC is supporting the activities of APNIC, due to the rapid growth of Internet in Asia Pacific regions, the application for IP address is also increasing sharply. It is largely hoped, that the NIC of each country will get organized, and the experiences that JPNIC has experienced from network administration are expected to be utilized in other countries.

6.3 Status of IP address allocation by APNIC

The following graph shows the present status of IP address allocation by APNIC from 94/4/14 to 94/10/27. Japan, Korea and Australia have their own country NIC, therefore it is not necessary to assign a class C address to each applicant. However, the applications for Class B addresses from country NIC are screened thoroughly and they are assigned individually. Blocks of IP addresses are assigned to the countries that have their own country NIC, here each block contains 256 IP addresses. The addresses maintained by country NIC are also covered in this graph. The IP address allocation to Australia was yet to be carried out during the above mentioned period.