Newsletter No.2/Nov. 1994

Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC)
c/o Computer Centre, Univ. of Tokyo
Yayoi 2-11-16, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan

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

Here is an example to retrieve 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

It may produce a lot of summary lines including other information such as IP addresses but you will find its domain name if it has. After getting the domain name ABC.AC.JP, you'd better check its full content as follows (if "ABC" matches only single entry, whois generates its full content directly):

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

If its state is not "Connected" you do not reach at the domain. Even if the state is "Connected" some domains are not reachable from outside of Japan depending on its right of international link use.

JPNIC whois has similar functions to InterNIC whois. If you want know more on its usage please send help as follows:

% 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 you unfortunately 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 or want to read them in Japanese, omit trailing "/e" in any case.

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

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

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

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

In the list domains 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.