Dear Readers,

Special Article 1 covers "Internet Week 2019". It was held from Tuesday, November 26, through Friday, November 29, 2019. The theme was "metabolism". The way the Internet has developed so far is similar to an organism’s metabolism. Based on that idea,this year's theme was determined with the hope that it would be possible to promote a metabolism of participants' knowledge and skills.

Metabolism means "throwing away the old and bringing in the new" and to realize this, the core part that supports the mechanism needs to be solid. The program structure was also designed with two parts. The goal was to build a solid foundation with the "defense" part and to absorb new knowledge and know-how with the "offense" part.

The "IP Meeting" is a part of the main program for Internet Week and functions as a plenary meeting for the Internet Week. "Internet Operating Trends" by Mr. Tomoya Yoshida of NTT Communications Corporation is really popular and a must-attend session every year. It summarizes the operational trends of routing topology, traffic, DNS, security, etc., for the year, and this program is the best way to quickly grasp the trends for the year. We present a summary of his session as a report of the IP Meeting.

By the way, did you know that the networks used at the Internet Week venue are run by a volunteer network team? We also introduce the activities of the team, who are working behind the scenes to support all of us before and during the event.

In this installment of the "Prologue to the Internet": its Technologies and Services, "Dr. Netson" and the JP29-type-robot "Nic-kun" of the Internet research institute explain "the Development of e-mail". Are you still using e-mail? These days, many people think that social networking services are enough and that they don't need any other communication tools, but standard e-mail is still superior in some ways.

"Introducing JPNIC members" focuses on a particular JPNIC member engaged in interesting activities. This time around, we focus on "digitiminimi Inc.", headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. They had been involved in the music industry through helping a certain big artist to broadcast his music live via the Internet, and this motivated the team to found their company. Now, they offer a wide variety of services from infrastructure to development.They are driven by passion for their mission to help people in need through their technology and knowledge. The employees are proud of themselves as a group of independent engineers, and their workplace is a perfect place to work for a select few.

"The Internet loves you" is a corner that introduces someone who is active in the Internet industry. This time, we introduce Mr. Jacob Williams of INTERLINK CO., LTD. He comes from Salt Lake City, Utah, and is responsible for the domain name registry service. His hobby is participating in triathlons, and he trains steadily using the latest gadgets. He talks about the reasons he came to Japan, the domain name service, ICANN conferences, and so on.

In our "10 Minute Internet Course", we highlight the features and advantages of the next generation Wi-Fi standard, Wi-Fi 6/IEEE 802.11ax. Wi-Fi is the name used for devices developed under the IEEE 802.11 (less than or equal to 802.11) standard that have passed testing, and indicates that they have met industry standards for interoperability set by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Now that smart devices are must-have tools, "Wi-Fi" seems to be familiar to even average users. The next-generation standard, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), is designed to improve network efficiency and evolve into an infrastructure technology that can meet the demands of an increasingly congested IoT device environment.

In addition, you'll also find "Internet Topics", "JPNIC Activity Reports", "Statistics" etc., for the past several months.

If you have any comments or feedback, please feel free to contact us at jpnic-news@nic.ad.jp. Your comments are greatly appreciated!!