The Internet Timeline

As an organization dealing with researches and studies of cutting-edge science and technology for military application, Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense was established.

A research project of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) funded by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the U.S. Department of Defense was started. The ARPANET is the world's first packet communication network and widely recognized as the beginning of the current Internet.

As an operating system (OS) for computers, Unix was developed by Bell Labs of AT&T. The OS has been spreading mainly on universities and research institutes. Today, Unix is widely used in the world. Important technologies such as Unix to Unix Copy Protocol (UUCP) and TCP/IP derive from UNIX.

ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), which is widely recognized as the origin of the current Internet, started its operation, connecting 4 nodes: the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB); University of Utah; and Stanford Research Institute (SRI), using IMP (Interface Message Processor).

Network Control Program (NCP) is the program to be used to connect computers on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency). It was developed by Robert E. Kahn of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and implemented to all the nodes of the ARPANET in the period of 1971-1972 by DARPA.

Robert E. Kahn of U.S. Defense DARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) introduced an idea of ”open-architecture” where an end-to-end packet communication network with best-effort traffic is implemented to interconnect independent networks established by various infrastructures. The concept originally designed for a wireless network contributed to the development of TCP/IP, which was later widely used in the Internet.

The name of ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) of the U.S. Department of Defense was changed to the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

Since the establishment of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), all the network-connected nodes were managed by Augmentation Research Center (ARC) founded by Douglas Engelbart of SRI (Stanford Research Institute). The center was also called DDN-NIC, since Network Information Center (NIC) and Defense Data Network (DDN) were under its control. In order to make the NIC function independent from the ARC, Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC) project was launched, led by Elizabeth J. Feinler of SRI. This InterNIC project is also called ”SRI-NIC” to distinguish from another InterNIC project later implemented by U.S. NSF (National Science Foundation).

RFC322, Well Known Socket Numbers, was published by Jon Postel and Vint Cerf working both for the UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). On this RFC, a managing function of the Internet name resources, such as domain names, IP addresses, and protocol port numbers was described. The function is a predecessor of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).

Following the demonstration of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) presented at the ICCC (International Computer Communication Conference), a research group called ”International Network Working Group (INWG)” was formed to develop protocols for packet communication, leading later to advanced development of TCP/IP.

ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) connected by more than one computer was demonstrated by Robert E. Kahn of U.S. Defense DARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) at International Computer Communication Conference (ICCC).

Robert E. Kahn of U.S. DARPA and Vinton Cerf of Stanford University introduced an initial version of TCP/IP, which is currently used widely in the Internet. The TCP/IP is a collective term referring to two communication protocols, TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol). The introduction of the TCP/IP has allowed mutual information exchange between different machines based on different physical formats or operating systems, as well as implementation of packet communication leading to a fault-resilient network. The TCP/IP has largely contributed to future development of the Internet.

With a packet communication network connected between the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, operation of a network called ”N-1 network” was launched. The N-1network was gradually expanded as more universities and colleges joined it, and in 1980s, it was connected by many academic institutions in Japan. However, the network terminated its operation on December 31, 1999 to prevent the Y2K problem.

A concept of public-key cryptography was proposed by Bailey Whitfield Diffies and Martin Edward Hellman of Stanford University, followed by publication of Diffie-Hellman key exchange theory.

A public-key cryptography scheme called ”RSA encryption” was released. The scheme was named after its inventers, Ronald Linn Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Max Adleman.

The U.S. government publicly sought an idea of standard encryption to be commonly used among the government agencies, and a common key encryption scheme called Data Encryption Standard (DES) was adopted.

A protocol called Unix to Unix Copy Protocol (UUCP) was developed to connect UNIX computers via serial lines and, accordingly, to interconnect many computers for the purpose of transferring data for e-mails, internet news (e.g. Usenet), etc. The network later became known as UUCPNET.

Version 1.0 of Ethernet, which is the local area network (LAN) standard most commonly used today, was presented to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE).

With 5 million dollars funded by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Computer Science Network (CSNET) started its operation. The CSNET was designed to provide network connections to organizations which were not allowed to directly use ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) due to restrictions including Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The CSNET initially connected the University of Delaware, Princeton University, and Purdue University.

BITNET (Because It's Time Network) was launched as a network among researchers who were using IBM mainframes. It was initially operated as a network connecting City University of New York (CUNY) and Yale University.

The Japan's first national-scale network ”N-1 network” was launched, in October 1974, as a result of the joint study by the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation, and its operation was officially started in October 1981. The network operation was continued until December 1999, as a national-level network interconnecting computer center of the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Tohoku University, and others.

Eunet (the European UNIX network) connecting four European countries was launched among Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and the U.K.

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) was standardized as RFC821, which are used commonly today as a e-mail transfer protocol.

The ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) had been utilized in the areas of academic research and military technology since its launch. As MILNET (Military Network) for military use was established, the military section was separated from the section of ARPANET for civilian use.

In place of the NCP (Network Control Program) previously applied in the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the TCP/IP protocol was adopted as a standard protocol. TCP/IP is a protocol still widely used even today.

The protocol used in ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was shifted from NCP (Network Control Program) to TCP/IP widely used in the Internet today. This the first moment that IPv4 address was used.

Domain Name System (DNS) was developed by Paul Mockapetris and Jonathan B. Postel from Information Sciences Institute (ISI) of University of Southern California. Before it was developed, association between a computer connected to a network and an IP address was managed by a text file called ”hosts.txt.” Such a management scheme came to an end as networks were more widely used, and the DNS serving as distributed database became a common management tool.

While UNIX systems based on the UNIX version 6 distributed by AT&T Bell Laboratories were developed across the country, Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) of University of California at Berkeley (UCB) also distributed Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) version UNIX. Version 4.2 of the BSD UNIX, released in September 1983, implementing TCP/IP gave a strong impetus toward growth of the Internet.

The following three RFCs were published in relation to DNS.

・RFC881 ”The Domain Names Plan and Schedule”, J. Postel
・RFC882 ”DOMAIN NAMES - CONCEPTS and FACILITIES”, P. Mockapetris
・RFC883 ”DOMAIN NAMES - IMPLEMENTATION and SPECIFICATION”, P. Mockapetris

Operation of HEPNET-J (High Energy Physics Network - Japan) was initiated as a network connecting High Energy Physics Laboratory (KEK; present High Energy Accelerator Research Organization) with seven universities, namely, University of Tsukuba, the University of Tokyo, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Kyoto University, Hiroshima University, Nagoya University, Chuo University, via a packet communication network.

Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) was developed by ISC (Internet Systems Consortium). Since then, BIND has been widely used as a DNS (Domain Name System) server software all over the world.

Programmer of Pakistan created and spread the first computer virus ”Brain” for the purpose of protesting an unauthorized copying of software.

An experiment for international network connection was launched by the research division of Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co. Ltd. (present KDDI R&D Laboratories). It achieved a connection between the JUNET and Usenet as a Unix to Unix Copy Protocol (UUCP) network.

”symbolics.com” was registered as the first domain name implementing ”.com”.

Semigovernmental corporation ”Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation” was denationalized and ”Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT)” was established in accordance to the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation Law.

Registration and management of ”.uk” country code top-level domain (ccTLD) was delegated to the U.K. by IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority).

Funded by the U.S. NSF (National Science Foundation), the CSNET (Computer Science Network) was restructured as a network where researchers could commonly and freely use computers, and the new network was launched as National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET). Many of the universities that already had previous connections to CSnet were migrated from CSnet to NSFnet regional network connections, and the NSFnet was envisioned to be the large scale shared backbone.

U.S company ”Digital Equipment Corporation(DEC)” developed the first firewall.

A private organization called Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) for better standardization of Internet technologies was founded by Internet Advisory Board of the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). Soon fterwards IAB was renamed ”Internet Activities Board”,currently named ”Internet Architecture Board” and serves as a subsidiary origination of Internet Society (ISOC). The first IETF meeting was held in San Diego, California, U.S.A

A network connection between JUNET and CSNET (Computer Science Network) was successfully established, and the first Japanese network connection to foreign network was accomplished.

Registration and management of ”.jp” country code top-level domain (ccTLD) was delegated to Japan by IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority).

Registration and management of ”. de” country code top-level domain (ccTLD), was delegated to former West Germany by IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority).

A science information network (NACSIS network) designed to provide academic information among research organizations was launched by National Center of Science Information System (NACSIS, present National Institute of Informatics). The NACSIS network was advanced to Science Information Network (SINET) later, and SINET4 is currently in operation in 2013.

In those days, overseas communication was performed through an international trial communication service provided by the research division of Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co. Ltd. (present KDDI R&D Laboratories). However, since it was difficult to provide free-of-charge services due to restrictions posed by Kokusai Denshin Denwa Company, Ltd. Law (KDD Law), Japan's first international internet service provider (ISP) called ”InetClub” was founded as a membership club charging fees (actual cost) for its communication service.

Using the University of Tokyo connected to the CSNET (Computer Science Network) as a gateway, an international E-mail service operation was launched. This allowed non-commercial organizations, such as academic institutions, among members of JUNET to send E-mails to overseas recipients, in accordance with the terms of service for CSNET's AUP(Acceptable Use Policy).

Operation of Japan Academic Inter-university Network (JAIN) connected by various communication lines was started as an inter-university network connecting campus LANs for academic purposes.

WIDE (Widely Integrated Distributed Environment) workshop started in 1985 established an experimental environment called ”WIDE Internet,” aiming to achieve a broad-area large-scale distributed environment for computers. Similarly to the current Internet, TCP/IP was used in the experimental environment. The WIDE workshop was then, in 1988, renamed to WIDE Project and started its official operation, where research and development activities took place joined by some corporations.

NTT launched ”INS-Net 64” as the world's first commercial ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) service. The new service provided some functions unique to digital lines taking advantages of simultaneous availability of two circuits in a 64 kbps channel, such as a telephone call while maintaining an Internet connection, and MP (PPP Multilink Protocol) connection that could be established at 128 kbps using two circuits simultaneously.

An experimental TCP/IP connection with CSNET (Computer Science Network) between Japan and the U.S., was established. This was the day, which the first IP Packet crossed the Pacific Ocean. This experiment was led by Shigeki Goto from NTT (currently, professor of Waseda University and president of JPNIC) and other members.

”Morris” worm, which could infect computers via network, was created and caused an unprecedented incident where over 10% of computers connected to the ARPANET at that time were rendered incapable to continue their services. It was the first worm which caused such an extensive damage on the Internet. In response to the incident, a concept of computer security was formed, leading to foundation of a Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) called the Computer Emergency Response Team/Coordination Center (CERT/CC) in the United States.

As triggered by the Morris worm that occurred in the same year, computer security incident response team(CSIRT) was set up on as the ”CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC)” in Carnegie Mellon University by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA).

World's first commercial Internet Seivice Provider PSINet was established.

Operation and administration of the BIND DNS was started, in parallel with the migration to TCP/IP connection and the ”.JP” domain names.

”Network Address Coordination Committee” voluntarily operated mainly by academics had been responsible for assigning IP addresses in Japan, from February 1989 to June 1992, until the task was taken over by JNIC. Before the committee was founded, an application for a IP address block was directly sent to the international assignment intuition, namely, Stanford Research Institute Network Information Center (SRI NIC). Network Address Coordination Committee was thereafter assumed responsibilities for gathering applications for IP address assignment, putting together the domestic applications and send to SRI NIC, receiving a group of addresses, and distributing them to applicants in Japan.

A concept of prototypic HyperText Markup Language (HTML) was unveiled by Tim Berners-Lee, an engineer of European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

Migrating from ”.JUNET” domain names, use of ”.JP” started. Registration of domain names in a conventional manner, such as ”organization name.JUNET,” was gradually replaced to use organizational categorized second level domain names , such as ”university name.ac.jp” or ”company name.co.jp.”

On the Internet accessed by numerous computers, a technology called ”routing control” had been required to select an optimum communication path toward a desired communication target. EGP (Exterior Gateway Protocol) was commonly used for the control. However, as the size of a network increased in response to advancement of the Internet, the conventional EGP was no more able to perform efficient routing control. Accordingly, a new routing control protocol called BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), which is still commonly used today, was released.

Japan's first domestic computer virus ”Japanese Christmas”, that send Christmas messages on December 25, appeared.

In those days, contents on the Internet were provided in a manner different from current Web and, in many cases, files were downloaded via FTP (File Transfer Protocol). As a mechanism to search a target file quickly and efficiently among numerous FTP servers present on the Internet, the earliest form of search engine called ”archie” was developed.

For the purpose of cooperation and information exchange, FIRST (Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams) was established as CSIRT(Computer Security Incident Response Team). CERT/CC of the United States played a leading role.

The operation of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) was officially terminated in February 1990. The ARPANET launched in October 1969, was still operated even after its use for academic purposes, but reduced due to establishment of CSNET (Computer Science Research Network) in 1981and restructure into NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network) in 1986 as well as separation of military network in 1983 to form MILNET (military network).

It was announced in the first IP Meeting that the bind-admin (a group of DNS administrators including WIDE, TISN, and JAIN) would be responsible for administration of name servers for ”.JP” and ”**.JP.”

As a meeting where network operators from all over Japan were gathered to exchange information and make discussions, the first ”IP Meeting” was held at Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC) of Keio University, on the initiative of Hiroaki Takada from the University of Tokyo (currently, in Nagoya University), late Masaki Hirabaru from Kyushu University, Akira Kato from Keio University, and others. The second IP Meeting held in November 18, 1991 at Sophia University and subsequent ones were hosted by Japanese Engineering & Planning Group/IP (JEPG/IP), which was established in 1991 with the purposes of conducting technological studies and reviews for more smooth operation and stable advancement of the Internet operation from unbiased point of view, and making necessary recommendations. The meeting was extended and advanced to an event called ”Internet Week” in December 1997. Thereafter, IP Meeting has been held every year as a plenary meeting in the Internet Week.

The Japan Committee for Research Networks (JCRN） held the first meeting on October 16, 1990, as a preparatory committee designed for organizing a liaison and coordination body to encourage research networks. Between then and May 23, 1995, the JCRN provided various activities, including eight general assembly meetings and two ”JCRN Seminars,” aiming to resolve different issues to help further advancement of the Internet.

Gopher, an early text-based information search system, was not widely used in Japan, and replaced with WWW (World Wide Web) which was subsequently developed.

Japanese Engineering & Planning Group/IP (JEPG/IP) was established with the purposes of conducting technological studies and reviews for more smooth operation and stable advancement of the Internet operation from neutral point of view, and making necessary recommendations.

The WIDE Internet operated by WIDE Project and the BITNETJP network mainly operated by Tokyo University of Science were interconnected.

The first meeting of International Network Conference (INET) was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. Although some conferences on international networks for academic research had been held individually before then, an integrated conference on international networks was required in response to increased commercialization and privatization of the Internet. During the first meeting, foundation of ISOC (Internet Society) was advocated by Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, and others.

New public-key cryptography software called ”PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)” was released by Philip R. Zimmermann Jr.

The world's first website was released by Tim Berners-Lee of CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). A reproduction of the website in 1992 is available for review on the current CERN website.

As a subsidiary organization of JCRN (Japan Committee for Research Networks), Japan Network Information Center (JNIC) was created as a body to be responsible for distributing Internet resources, such as domain names and IP addresses. At the same time JNIC took over the service of assigning JP domain names which had been provided by a group called ”junet-admin”.

JNIC (Japan Network Information Center) published, on December 1, 1991, a document entitled ”Concerning Registration of JP Domain Names” in which rules for JP domain names were documented for the first time. Until it was published, registration of JP domain names was done by undocumented rules and practices, but not on documented rules.

Some volunteers in members of Japanese Engineering & Planning Group/IP (JEPG/IP) started to respond to reported computer security incidents in the country via e-mail communication at ”jpcert@jepg-ip.ad.jp”.

ISOC (Internet Society) was established as a non-profit organization for the purposes of solving and discussing challenges and issues related to standardization, education, and policies on the Internet technologies and systems.

In the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), some pages using HTML, that show Japanese Constitution and internal information, were created and utilized. These pages weren't published to the outward, but it was the lead of WWW construction in Japan.

In Europe, a group of regional network operators called RIPE (Réseaux IP Européens) had been operated since 1989. In April 1992, RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) was established as RIR (Regional Internet Registry) in Amsterdam, Netherlands. RIPE NCC is one of the five largest RIRs in the world and is currently providing registry services for IP addresses and AS numbers in Europe, Middle and Near East, and a part of Asia.

Discussions over the establishment of Regional Internet Registry (RIR) covering the Asia Pacific region were started during the Asia-Pacific Coordinating Committee for International Research Networking (APCCIRN) conference held in Tokyo.

Assignment of IP addresses in Japan was originally directly requested by individual organizations and, in February 1989, was shifted to a collective application method where Network Address Coordination Committee put together applications in Japan and sent the applicants on their behalf to SRI NIC (Stanford Research Institute Network Information Center). Following the transfer of registration and management services for JP domain names from junet-admin to JNIC in December 1991, control over IP addresses was also transferred from Network Address Coordination Committee to JNIC.

Following the first conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark, the second International Network Conference (INET) was held in Kobe, Japan. The INET '92 was not only the first INET meeting held in Japan, but also the first event which took place after the ISOC (Internet Society) was founded.

NIFTY-Serve and PC-VAN which were leading BBS(Bulletin Board System), started with WIDE Project an interconnection experiment.

The first HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) website in Japan was released on the server of Computing Research Center of National Laboratory for High Energy Physics (KEK; present High Energy Accelerator Research Organization).

With the exsisting way where IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) solely took responsibility for management of IP addresses all over the world, it was no more able to satisfy growing demands for the addresses. Accordingly, RFC1366 was published, which recommended to set up auxiliary organizations (equivalent to current RIR (Regional Internet Registry)) to take over the IP address management tasks in accord with the local situations of respective regions previously charged with IANA.

After the registry service for domain names was transferred from the junet-admin to the JNIC, JUNET survived as an experimental network. Private businesses which could not migrate to a different network, such as an academic network and a regional network, were still in the JUNET. The JNIC rules at that time required its members to be connected to at leaset one network to ensure their interconnectivity, and there were no commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) those days. Against this backdrop, the JUNET Society was established to accommodate such private businesses as its members, that were entitled to be provided with its network connection.

AT&T Jens Co., Ltd. launched a commercial Internet access service called ”SPIN” as the Japan's first Internet service provider. SPIN was the interconnection service using UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Protocol).

Following AT&T Jens Co., Ltd., Internet Initiative Kikaku K.K. (IIJ) was founded as one of the first Japanese Internet service providers. IIJ changed its name to Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (IIJ) in May 1993. In the same year, it started a new connection service using UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Protocol) in July and Internet access service in November.

”Mosaic” browser, a progenitor of all modern web browers, was released by U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Development of the Mosaic which was applicable to hypertext language and capable of displaying an image on the same window as the hypertext page made a huge contribution to widespread use of World Wide Web (WWW).

As the use of the Internet increased, NIC functions(functions as Network Information Center for managing domain names and IP addresses) came under review. InterNIC was founded by U.S. NSF (National Science Foundation), under the conditions that directory and database service was practically operated by AT&T, information service by General Atomics (General Atomics were later off the contract and the service was taken over by AT&T), and domain name registration service by Network Solutions.

Commercial use of the Internet in Japan was authorized by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, which allowed operation of ISP business in the country.

At APCCIRN (Asia-Pacific Coordination Committee for International Research Networking) conference held in January 1993 in Honolulu, researches and experiments toward establishment of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) were proposed by Jun Murai and Masaki Hirabaru (JPNIC/WIDE).

As the number of domain name registrations increased sharply in response to rapid growth of the Internet, it was required to process a larger amount of paperwork and increased capital investments to ensure stable operation of its registration functions. To fulfill such a requirement, JPNIC started to collect dues from ISP members at the timing of the reorganization from JNIC to JPNIC.

JNIC (Japan Network Information Center) founded in December 1992 was reorganized to a membership organization called ”Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC)” consisting of various network projects including Internet service providers.

The first JPNIC Steering Committee meeting was held, on May 29, 1993, at the large conference room in Computer Center of the University of Tokyo.

For encoding for Japanese characters to exchange messages on the Internet, RFC1466 (ISO-2022-JP) was issued by Jun Murai, Mark Crispin, Erik van der Poel and so on.

HTML version 1.0 was submitted as an Internet draft by Tim Berners-Lee and Daniel Connolly in IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).

In the past, IP addresses could only be assigned in a unit called ”Class,” more specifically, Class A (16,777,216 addresses), Class B (65,536 addresses), and Class C (256 addresses). However, due to increased number of connected terminals in response to the growth of the Internet, it was worried that IP addresses might be exhausted. To solve the problem, a more flexible mechanism for IP address assignment independent of the Class scheme called ”Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR)” was invented. The new CIDR mechanism brought changes in two functions; routing system and IP address assignment.

APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) is the Regional Internet Registry covering the Asia Pacific region, originally proposed by Jun Murai and Masaki Hirabaru (JPNIC/WIDE project) at APCCIRN (Asia-Pacific Coordination Committee for International Research Networking) conference. At the APCCIRN conference held in August 1993 in San Francisco, ”APNIC pilot project” started to consider and operate APNIC functions in a limited period between September 1993 and June 1994. In fact, APNIC WG was in JPNIC and Japanese members were involved in assignment of IP addresses of the AP region.

The conventional IP address assignment scheme where a request from a user was directly processed by JPNIC was replaced with a new scheme in which a block of IP addresses is allocated to JPNIC members and the addresses in the block were then assigned to individual applicants.

Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (IIJ) started provide he Internet access service using TCP/IP to domestic area, for the international connection using UUCP.

Along with the handover of IP address blocks from InterNIC/APNIC to JPNIC, administration of reverse DNS servers was started, in addition to conventional ”.JP” DNS servers.

A pilot project toward implementation of a new concept of domain names, called ”geographical type JP domain names,” which could be used by local municipal entities as well as individuals and organization residing in the local regions, was started.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) launched information providing service through a website, and established a page called ”What's New in Japan” which posted new information on WWWs and URLs all over the world. Until then, none of Japanese services were providing a list of world's websites, and portal sites and search sites in the county was pioneered by the NTT service.

An Internet connection service was started by NIFTY-Serve. With the new service, domestic and international E-mail communication, telnet connection, and subscription of NetNews became available.

The Japan's first Internet Exchange (IX) called ”NSPIXP” was installed in Tokyo by WIDE Project in March 1994, followed by the launch of its operation in December. NSPIXP was designed mainly for interconnection of commercial internet service providers (ISPs). Although only four ISPs were interconnected at the beginning of the new operation in 1994, its users increased to over 20 ISPs by the end of 1995, resulting in a very important interconnection point for the Internet in Japan. NSPIXP was then, in 1996, replaced with NSPIXP-2.

The first full-text search engine for WWW (World Wide Web) called ”WebCrawler” was launched. It has been transformed and is still used as of April 2013.

The 100 School Project was launched by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry for the purpose of promoting the use of the Internet in elementary and secondary education.

Amazon.com which started as an on-line book seller is one of the successful on-line stores at the earliest phase of on-line business. Expanding its product line, Amazon.com has been and is still growing.

In addition to conventional e-mail and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) services, JPNIC started posting information of the center on its website using HTTP.

Against the backdrop of full-scale commercialization of the Internet, Japanese company Impress (currently, Impress Japan Corporation) launched a subscription service of newsletters called ”Internet Magazine”. The newsletters were designed to facilitate broader use of the Internet and provide a wide range of information on the Internet.

Led by Tim Berners-Lee who invented WWW (World Wide Web), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was established.

”Mado-no-Mori (Windows Forest),” the oldest on-line software library service in Japan, was launched on the server of Tohoku University. It was called ”Akiu-mado” when it was started, and is currently operated by Impress Watch Corporation.

JUNET Society was founded in October 1992 with the purpose of maintaining JUNET network launched in October 1984 for the organizations which were not able to migrate to other networks even after the transition from ”.junet” to ”.jp,” and the delegation of registry service to JNIC. However, not only because the network environment was sufficiently developed, but also because IP (Internet Protocol) connection was getting to be a mainstream scheme in place of UUCP (Unix to Unix CoPy) and the operation on a volunteer basis would not be maintained any more, it was declared that JUNET Society had completed its missions and would be dissolved in order for a constructive future.

Kento Tamura, a student in Waseda University, started providing a robot type search engine service called ”Searcher in Waseda” for the first time in Japan. The service was later renamed to ”Senrigan (Clairvoyance)” and continued until March 31, 1999.

Subsequent to Mosaic created by NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) and released in 1993, the initial version of ”Netscape Navigator” web browser was released by Netscape Communications Corp. Partly because of the free distribution of the software with limited functions, Netscape Navigator gained a position of the predominant web browser.

Foundation of APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) was officially approved, and its first meeting was held in Bangkok, Thailand. After it was initially proposed to be established as the RIR (Regional Internet Registry) covering the Asia Pacific region at the APCCIRN (Asia-Pacific Coordinating Committee for International Research Networking) conference held in Honolulu, Hawaii in January 1993, APNIC was under a pilot project.

Tokyo Internet Corporation commenced its Internet connection service called ”TokyoNet Internet Service”. The company was established in December 1994 as an independent ISP and a subsidiary organization of Unix Business Association (UBA).

Java and HotJava (browser) were unveiled at ”Sun World '95”event hosted by Sun Microsystems, Inc. in U.S. (later, merged by Oracle Corp.). Triggered by integration into Netscape Navigator, full-scale popularization of JAVA was accelerated. It was epoch-making software that allowed animation to be shown on the browser and users to have interactive operations.

The cost of maintenance and administration for domain names had been funded by maintenance fees for the subsequent year paid by registrants. As the number of registration rapidly increased, it became difficult to secure the cost required for maintaining the registry function until the fees were paid in the following year. Accordingly, with the purposes of securing adequate financial basis and developing the use of JP domain names stably, a new application fee system was started, where a fee was collected when an application for a domain name was filed. Such a shift was seen not only in relation to the ”.jp” domain names, but also other gTLDs, such as ”.com,” ”.net,” and ”.org.” The application fee system was applied to the other three domain names in September 1995, three months later than ”.jp” domain names.

In those days, none of current commercial web-search engines, such as Yahoo!, Google, and Bing, were available. Generally, to visit a certain webpage it was required to either directly enter an appropriate URL or follow a link from a different page. To solve such inconvenience, a student in Toyohashi University of Technology started a service called ”List of Japan Servers (Yahho),” which attracted many users although it was merely an experimental service provided by an individual.

Similar to the fee system for domain names, application fees to IP addresses applied on or after June 1, 1995 also started to be charged from July 1995. Aiming for smooth and efficient processing of applications, a part of the JPNIC tasks, namely IP address assignment, was delegated to regular ISP members which sufficiently understood roles and tasks of JPNIC.

Services of PHS - Personal Handy-phone System, a microcell mobile communication service, started and then got popular among the mobile Internet users.

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (currently, Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI)) published the ”Computer Virus Prevention Guidelines”, which included effective measures to prevent, find, and clean computer viruses as well to recover from damages caused by them.

The first Windows version supporting TCP/IP as a default function was released. The Internet Explorer browser was also included in this version, enabling to establish an Internet connection with greater ease.

With the license for NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) Mosaic, Microsoft Corporation developed a web browser called ”Internet Explorer (IE)” built on the source codes of the Mosaic, and released the initial version of IE. The version 1 was not incorporated into the operating system and it had to be obtained as additional software. Besides, the initial version did not support Japanese.

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (currently, Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI)) established the ”Information System Safety Standards” with the purpose of securing confidentiality, maintainability, and availability of information systems. The standards showed measures for system users to take in order to prevent problems of a natural disaster, failure of system equipment, intentional or unintentional mishandling, as well as to minimize the damages caused by such events and promptly recover from them.

NEC Corporation launched a directory type search service called ”NETPLAZA.” At the beginning, the service provided only approximately 300 pages of websites in 20 or some categories. It was quite small scale compared to today's search engines.

NTT East and NTT West launched a monthly flat-rate service called ”Tele-hodai” to provide an unlimited access to predestinated phone numbers in late-night and early-morning time zones. In those days, phone line charges for personal computer communication and dial-up internet access were commonly on a pay-per-use basis. The NTT's new service triggered the widespread use of such flat-rate services.

Asahi Shimbun Company launched a news service site ”asahi.com”.

InterNIC which was providing registry service for ”.com,” ”.net,” and ”.org” started to charge fees for registration applications. For the domain name registration that used to be free of charge, a fee of U.S. $100 for the first two years (additional $50/year for renewal) was charged. Due to dramatic rise in the number of ”.com,” ”.net,” and ”.org” registrations in response to the rapid growth of the Internet, InterNIC had used up, in three years, 12 million dollars granted from National Science Foundation (NSF) as a budget for a 5-year plan of the domain name management. Consequently, similar to the ”.jp” managed by JPNIC, InterNIC decided to charge application fees for ”.com,” ”.net,” and ”.org.” registrations.

NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network) was started in 1986 as a result of restructuring CSNET (Computer Science Network) funded by NSF (National Science Foundation). But NSFNET project was closed after completing its role of serving as an Internet backbone and considered as it would be kept its minimum operation only as a internal research network.

As more and more organizations went on-line in response to the growth of the Internet, the number of small organizations which needed to use less than 32 IP addresses increased. Assigning conventional Class C (256 addresses) to such small scale organizations was very inefficient and could cause exhaustion of 32-bit address space if the number of the organizations would grow at the same rate. In view of such circumstances, a sub-allocation scheme was started as a pilot project in which the entire Class C area was allocated to JPNIC member ISPs(agents) and the agents were to assign a part of the space to applicant organizations, so that it would be possible to assign IP addresses in a unit smaller than Class C.

Fujitsu Limited started providing keyword-based search service called ”InfoNavigator.”

The first Windows version supporting TCP/IP as a default function was released in Japanese. The Internet Explorer browser was also included in the version, enabling to establish an Internet connection with greater ease.

Unlike today, search engines supplied by individual students were used by many users in those days. One of such engines called ”Searcher in Waseda” invented by a student of Waseda University was renamed to ”Senrigan,” which means a clairvoyant.

To avoid shortage of IPv4 addresses, specifications for a successor protocol had been discussed. The new protocol called ”IPng” in the middle of the discussion stage was officially renamed to ”IPv6,” and RFC1752 (The Recommendation for the IP Next Generation Protocol), or the first RFC describing its specifications, was published by IETF.

A Web search serviced called ”NTT DIRECTORY” was launched. It was a service allowing a user to make a search on the web through three types of engines: a robot engine ”TITAN”, full-text search engine ”InfoBee”, and a WWW-database linkage tool ”WebBASE”.

The global-scale ”6bone” network was established to be used in demonstration experiments of IPv6. In Japan, the ”WIDE 6bone network” based on the connection of WIDE Project was developed in July 1996. As the IPv6 was more widely deployed, operation of the 6bone was terminated on June 6, 2006 after completing its role in the experiments.

The ”Internet 1996 World Exposition” was held as a new type of exposition which was convened within the Internet network.

The geographic type JP domain names project was started in December 1993 as a pilot project designed for local municipal entities and individuals/organizations residing in the areas to register the domain names (application for new registration was no more accepted after March 31, 2012). The new type domain names were put into full service from April 1996 following two and half years of the trial period.

The world-famous search engine “Yahoo!” started a directory-type keyword search service supporting Japanese language as “Yahoo! Japan.”

Hotmail was a Web-based free e-mail service, and acquired by Microsoft in 1997. The service itself is still available today under a different name.

The KOREA Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (KrCERT/CC) was founded as a CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team) in South Korea.

When the registry service for domain names was transferred from junet-admin to JNIC in 1991, less than 1,000 JP domain names were registered. The number started to grow dramatically since around 1995, and reached 5,000 in February 1996. Then, six months later in August, the number of registered domain names exceeded 10,000.

”BIGLOBE” service was created by NEC by integrating ”PC-VAN” for BBS（Bulletin Board System) service, the conventional Internet access service ”mesh,” and ”The Cyber Plaza” content service.

Ministry of International Trade and Industry (currently, Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI)) established the ”Unauthorized Computer Access Prevention Guidelines” which included measures for businesses and individuals to take in order to prevent damages caused by unauthorized computer accesses and minimize their impact.

International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC) was established, based on the decision by ISOC Board of Trustees, aiming for improved administration of generic Top Level Domain (gTLD). The IAHC was comprised of member organizations including the ISOC, IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It presented, in February 1997, a recommendation called ”gTLD-Mou” toward establishment of a new TLD scheme. The new scheme was then developed into U.S. policy documents (i.e. Green Paper and White Paper) published by the U.S. government, which would lead to establishment of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1998.

”Computer Emergency Response Center (JPCERT/CC)” was set up in the Japan Information Processing Development Corporation (JIPDEC). The center would later become Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) as the independent organization. The JPCERT/CC is the CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team) covering Japan responsible for computer receiving reports, investigating, and taking response measures on ”incidents,” or attacks via the Internet.

NSPIXP, which started its operation as Japan’s first IX (Internet Exchange) located in Kanda-Jinbocho, Tokyo in 1994, was hardly able to process the expanding volume of traffic in response to the growth of the Internet. Therefore, a new IX called “NSPIXP-2” was set up in Otemachi, Tokyo and started its operation in 1996. NSPIXP then ended its operation in 1999, while NSPIXP-2 was restructured in 2003 into a distributed IX architecture. It was renamed to dix-ie (Distributed IX in EDO) and is still in service today.

The ”public network - private line - public network” connection was liberalized in domestic calls in Japan. The connection was characterized in that both terminals of an exclusive line owned by a company or other type of organization are connected to a public line of telecommunication carrier (e.g. NTT and KDD), and its application to phone calls had been restricted until then to protect Type I Telecommunications Carries. The liberalization has allowed making long distance calls at row rates.

ICQ (I seek you) is an instant messenger developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis. It paved the way for modern Windows-based instant messengers.

RFC 2050 “Internet Registry IP Allocation Guidelines” includes statements that IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), RIR (Regional Internet Registry), and LIR (Local Internet Registry) ensure address management in a hierarchical manner, and that the address assignment should consider ”Conservation,” ”Aggregation,” and ”Registration. The RFC2050 guidelines are still followed even today for proper IP address allocation.

The NE.JP domain names were introduced so that domain names for network services could be independent of OR.JP domain names. Accordingly, new registration of OR.JP domain names was partially restricted on a temporary basis. When the service of NE.JP domain names was started, the restriction was lifted.

In the past, ”OR.JP” domain names had been assigned to Internet service providers as organizational-type JP domain names. A new attribute of domain names ”NE.JP” was introduced for network service, and assignment of them was started. At the launch of the new domain names, transition from registered OR.JP domain names used for network services to NE.JP domain names was announced; however, the transition was optional and there were many service providers which decided to keep providing their services under OR.JP domain names.

In the past, there was a rule where the same character string on the third level can not be registered even if the attributes on the second level are different; for example, ”example.co.jp” and ”example.ne.jp.”couldn't exist at the same time. Since the environment around domain name management was different from that of the days when the rule had been introduced, it was determined that lifting such restriction would not cause large confusion. Accordingly, the ”Third level uniqueness rule” was abolished so that the domain name space could be effectively used.

In the conventional organizational/geographic-type JP domain names, no numerals could be used as the first character of the domain name label. On December 10, 1996, use of numerals in the first letter of the domain name label was allowed. The relaxing of restrictions was also designed to utilize the domain name space more effectively.

The working group activities led by Asia Pacific Networking Group (APNG) since mid-1990s were advanced to establish Asia & Pacific Internet Association (APIA), as non-profit trade association, comprising businesses in the Internet-related service industry in the Asia Pacific region. One of the major activities of APIA is hosting the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (APRICOT) forum once a year with a view to improve knowledge and skills necessary for engineers for further development of the Internet infrastructure in the Asia Pacific region.

IAHC (International Ad Hoc Committee), which was founded based on the decision by ISOC Board of Trustees with the purpose of improved administration of gTLD (generic Top Level Domain), published a draft document for creating new TLD called ”gTLD-MoU” 1998. Following the publication, U.S. government also published policy documents called ”Green Paper” and ”White Paper,” which would lead to establishment of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in 1998.

A user group of network operators in Japan called ”Japan Network Operators' Group (JANOG)” started its mailing list (ML) system.

”Infoseek Japan” service was launched as a Japanese version of the robot-type keyword search service provided by Infoseek Corporation.

A robot-type keyword search service called ”goo” was launched by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT). The service, currently provided by NTT Resonant Inc., was initially operated as a trial service provided by NTT.

PIAFS stands for ”Personal Handyphone System Internet Access Forum Standard” and is the data communication standard for PHS.

To establish a backbone network for research and development through interconnecting international lines operated by academic research institutions all over the Asia-Pacific region, operation of Asia-Pacific Advanced Network (APAN) was started.

U.S. company AlterNIC, which was providing alternate root service, hijacked responses to DNS (Domain Name System), and guided accesses to InterNIC toward AlterNIC. The sensational incident was a challenge to exclusive domain administration by InterNIC (practically operated by U.S. company Network Solutions).

JANOG (Japan Network Operators' Group) was formed as a forum for network operators to share and solve problems in japanese Networks.

In the ”6bone” network established for demonstration experiments on IPv6, allocation of IPv6 TLA (Top Level Aggregator) to individual organizations started, followed by commencement of an experiment using an IPv6 address ”3ffe:xxxx::” which was defined as an experimental address in RFC2471.

Even after registry services for domestic domain names and IP addresses in Japan were taken over by JPNIC, assignment of Automatic System numbers (AS numbers) was processed by Japanese Engineering and Planning Group/IP (JEPG/IP) since there was little experience with AS number operation in Japan and JPNIC was not ready for the number management. As of August 7, 1997, JPNIC assumed responsibility in assigning the AS numbers; thereby, registration of all the domestic Internet resources was under control of JPNIC.

The operation of M root server was started in Tokyo by the WIDE Project. It was the first root server operating in Asia Pacific region.

Based on the announcement that International ”public network - private line - public network” connection via the Internet would be available in August, 1997, the Type II Telecommunications Carriers were allowed to provide international Internet telephone service.(Type II Telecommunications Carriers: who provide services using telecommunication service of Type I Carriers.)

Contrary to existing search engines which were getting more and more complex, the Google service with a highly simplified interface won a reputation of returning accurate results. It kept advancing thereafter, and has now grown to be the world leading search engine, as of September 2013.

”Ultima Online” was released and its official service was launched. It is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) where a number of users can simultaneously join the game through a computer network. The game was developed as an MMORPG version of a then-famous computer RPG called ”Ultima”, and has attracted many users all over the world since then. It is said that the ”Ultima Online” is the first success of MMORPGs, which are now commonly seen on the market.

Aiming to reduce traffic concentrated in Tokyo, where NSPIXP and NSPIXP-2 were located, and back up the exchange points, a new IX (Internet Exchange) called ”NSPIXP-3” was set up in Osaka. Unlike NSPIXP and NSPIXP-2, the NSPIXP-3 was operated from the beginning as a distributed internet exchange.

While development of new TLD (Top Level Domain) was discussed globally, members of Interim Policy Oversight Committee (iPOC) leading the discussions over the issue, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and Council of Registrars (CORE) were invited to a symposium held in Japan. It was entitled ”New Development of the Internet Domain Name System” and held on November 7, 1997 at Kudan Kaikan hall in Tokyo. Discussions which took place during the symposium served as a basis for developing the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) designed for global coordination of various Internet resources. In those times of uncertainty over the future of the Internet operation, the discussions attracted global interests.

In the past, registration IP addresses had been under the management of the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), more specifically under the InterNIC project which was funded by U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). Similar to the case of domain names, practical services were provided by Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) subcontracted by IANA. However, after criticism over the service exclusively provided by NSI, the registry service for IP addresses was transferred from NSI to American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN).

Conventionally, domain names with ”OR.JP” had been assigned not only to judicial organizations, but also to unincorporated voluntary groups. A new attribute of ”GR.JP” was created for domain names to be provided to unincorporated entities. Due to the introduction of the GR.JP domain names, OR.JP domain names were no more assigned to unincorporated organization.

”Excite Japan” service was launched as a Japanese version of the robot-type keyword search service provided by Excite Corporation.

In response to the policy recommendations called ”gTLD-MoU” proposed as a result of discussions at International AdHoc Committee (IAHC) and other activities, the U.S government published a Green Paper addressing how to better manage names and addresses of the Internet technically. Since the Green Paper highlighted the efforts, investments, and rights of the U.S. government in the past, and the government apparently intended to be involved in the Internet resource management, the recommendation paper attracted criticisms and controversies.

In February 1998, two years after the JPNIC moved its office to Mansui Bldg. in Kanda-Surugadai, Tokyo in December 1995, it moved its office again to Fuundo Bldg. in Kanda-Ogawamachi, Tokyo. Compared to Mansui Bldg., the new office had a larger area which could accommodate dozens of staff people. However, as the amount of work increased in response to the growth of the Internet, the office space was increasingly crowded and needed additional space on different floors. The office which started with the area on one floor was finally expanded to include additional two floors.

The registration of JP domain names had been processed in accordance with a document entitled ”Assignment of JP domain names.” Considering the fact that social importance of domain names were increasing, ”Rules for JP domain name registration” were put into effect as registration rules, with the purpose of clarifying where to position them from the legal point of view. The registration rules have been revised many times, and are taken over by ”Rules for attribute-type (organizational-type) and geographical type JP domain names registration.”

The KAME Project was launched at the initiative of the WIDE Project, aiming to develop reference implementation for IPv6. In December 2000, the implementation was adopted in the major BSD UNIX, and the project achieved its initial goal. It subsequently worked on some modifications to accept changes in specifications, and it was closed in March 2006 after completion of transferring its authorities to relevant communities.

AltaVista service supporting Japanese language was launched. AltaVista was a full-text search engine developed by researchers of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and was extensively utilized in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries. Because the AltaVista service had a great number of indexed web pages, Japanese people gained ability of finding a desired page from among plentiful pages thanks to the new service supporting Japanese.

The Green Paper published by U.S. government on June 5, 1998 addressing how to better and technically manage names and addresses of the Internet attracted controversies on the Internet, and various comments were received. In response to those comments, U.S. government published a White Paper, including recompiled recommendations on the management system of the Internet. The White Paper suggested that a not-for-profit corporation responsible for coordinating management of domain names and IP addresses should be established. Consequently, the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was later founded.

Abolition of the International Telegraph and Telephone Act (KDD Law), which defined the services to be provided by Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co., Ltd. (KDD), was accepted by the cabinet on March 13, 1998. Replaced by ”Laws concerning improvements of relevant laws for rationalization of regulations in the telecommunication sector (Act No. 58 in 1998)” implemented on July 30, the KDD Law was officially abolished; which led KDD to be fully privatized.

JPCERT Coordination Center(JPCERT/CC) joined the FIRST (Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams), which purpose is cooperation and information exchange between countries CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team), as the first member from Japan.

The global Internet giant, Google Inc., which is not only famous for its robot type search engine service but also offers various other services recently, was founded in California, U.S.A. Setting an objective of gathering all the information in the world, the Google search engine service was provided through crawling of enormous amount of web pages and analyzing the information based on a unique process. It became popular very quickly and would later gain a bigger share in a short period.

The Taiwan Computer Emergency Response Team/Coordination Center (TWCERT/CC) was established as a CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team) in Taiwan.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was established as a non-profitable corporation in California, U.S.A., designed to manage the Internet resources, such as domain names, IP addresses, protocol port numbers, and parameter numbers, and to globally coordinate the DNS root name server system driven by the private sector. The establishment of ICANN followed the gTLD-MoU policy recommendations proposed as a result of discussions at the International AdHoc Committee (IAHC) and its activities, and discussions over the Internet governance triggered by the Green Paper and White Paper published by the U.S. government.

The number of registered JP domain names exceeded 50,000 in October 1998, in two years after it reached 10, 000 in July 1996, compared to more than five years required to achieve 10,000 registrations. Because general users began to be familiar with the Internet, the number of registration would show a sharp increase thereafter.

”Lycos Japan” service was launched as a Japanese version of the robot-type search engine service provided by the U.S. company Lycos Inc.

A memorandum of understanding so-called ICANN/DoC MoU was concluded between the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC). The ICANN/DoC MoU was designed for defining responsibilities both parties would need to assume and their objectives in order to collaboratively develop mechanisms, methods, and procedures required for transferring management of the Internet resources to the private sector.

Unlike academic educational institutions such as universities which were allowed to have registered ”AC.JP” domain names, educational institutions such as elementary, junior high, and high schools were assigned with geographical type JP domain names in the past. However, in light of the national policy determined to improve educational environment where students can have an access to the Internet in those schools, and the sharp increase in the number of registered domain names, ”ED.JP” was created for organizational type JP domain names to be assigned to educational institutions (high schools and lower-level schools).

As its own mobile phone service, NTT DoCoMo, started ”i-mode” service, which includes a variety of services, such as information retrieval using the Internet.

The Melissa virus, which infects computers through macro facility of the Microsoft's word processing software ”Word”, was spread to a vast number of machines. Infected PCs were manipulated to send E-mail messages to addresses listed on the Address Book of Microsoft Outlook with an infected Word file attachment, which created additional infected computers. The Melissa was designed to spread via E-mail messages addressed to a large number of unspecified recipients, therefore, had stronger infectability than any of the conventional viruses.

The technology currently called Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) was called Multilingualized Domain Name back in 1999. Aiming at a launch of Japanese domain names registration by the end of the fiscal year 2000, JPNIC published a draft document on ”JPNIC's approach to multilingual domain names.”

The resident registry data with approximately 210,000 entries in the city of Uji (Kyoto, Japan) was leaked via an MO disk brought into the city office by a private company, and sold on the Internet by a personal data broker. It was the first large-scale leakage of personal information managed by a municipality. As a result of the claim for damages brought by the citizens, the supreme court ordered the city to pay consolation money for the leaked information. The case was considered to be a precedent for subsequent cases of personal data leakage on the Internet.

A peer to peer file sharing service called ”Napster” went live. However, it turned out to be problematic as it gave great pressure on the Internet bandwidth and was also used for illegal file exchange.

Following the issue of RFC2460 which defined basic specifications of IPv6, JPNIC showed its commitment toward actively working on IPv6, taking it as a very important technology for the future growth of the Internet. More specifically, JPNIC committed to adopting the protocol into its offerings and services, such as promotion in Japan and supporting IPv6 in the JPNIC database and DNS server.

IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) responsible for global management of the Internet resources, such as IP addresses and domain names, allocated IPv6 addresses, for the first time, to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). Such an arrangement was made taking account of the fact that specifications of IPv6 were defined in the RFC2460 and almost finalized in December 1998, and that APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre), Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC), and ARIN developed an interim document on allocation and assignment of IPv6 in May 1999.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) was restructured into 4 companies; the original Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) as a holding company, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation (NTT East) and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone West Corporation (NTT West) providing regional communication services, and NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Communications) providing long-distance and international communication services.

The APNIC's IPv6 addresses were allocated to Japanese WIDE project for the first time in Japan and even in Asia Pacific region.

The National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team Coordination Center of China (CNCERT/CC) was founded as a CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team) in China.

The number of registered JP domain names hit 100,000 in September 1999, in less than one year after 50,000 registrations were achieved in October 1998.

Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) was developed as a measure to solve disputes on gTLD (generic Top Level Domain) and implemented by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

Registrations of ”.com,” ”.net,” and ”.org” had been managed by Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) for U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). After the foundation of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), ICANN and NSI entered into a .com/.net/.org registry agreement effective for four years, and the Registry-Registrar System which is still used today was introduced. Thereafter, NSI was merged into VeriSign, Inc. The management of .org domain names was taken over by Public Interest Registry (PIR) in December 2002, while registrations of .com and .net domain names are still managed by VeriSign, following several renewals of the agreement.

More than 10 organizations, including U.S. companies RSA Security, IBM, and Microsoft, organized an industrial association for Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technologies called ”PKI Forum”, with seeking for development, wider use, and established interoperability of the PKI technologies.

The ”Internet Week”, which was originally started as ”IP Meeting” in 1990 and changed the name to the current one in 1997 as it expanded involving various tutorials and sub-conferences, had been hosted by JEPG/IP (Japanese Engineering & Planning Group/IP) consecutively since the first meeting. However, the host was taken over by JPNIC from the third Internet Week event entitled ”Internet Week 99”.

The Webpages of the Science and Technology Agency (current, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) in Japan were altered through an unauthorized access. It was the first of the widely reported cases where the Webpages of government ministries and agencies were attacked and altered by outsiders. It was unveiled, in the subsequent cases on other ministries and agencies, that their information security measures were not always sufficient. In consideration of such cases, the government established ”IT Security Office (currently, National Information Security Center) in the Cabinet Secretariat on February 29, 2000.

Before the agent service started, it was required to be a member of APNIC to apply for IPv6 addresses. However, JPNIC members were allowed make an application without being required to join the APNIC.

It was decided that IP address policies for the Asia Pacific region would be documented as an independent document by APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre), which was RIR (Regional Internet Registry) in the region. Following the decision, JPNIC drafted a similar document ”JPNIC policy for address space management.” Consequently, IP address procedures documents, formats, technical references were fully revised to be consistent or refer to the new policy document.

Windows 2000, the successor operating system (OS) of Windows NT 4.0, was released. Windows 2000 became widely used as it was a stable NT series OS also with a Graphical User Interface (GUI) similar to that of the Windows 9x series.

In the past, global management of the Internet resources, such as domain names, IP addresses, and protocol numbers was under control of IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) project group led by Professor Jon Postel of ISI (Information Science Institute), University of California. However, after the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was founded, IANA's roles of resources management were taken over by ICANN. Currently, IANA is used as the name of resources management/control functions of ICANN.

The ”Act on the Prohibition of Unauthorized Computer Access” was put into effect to prohibit ”spoofinging” activities using someone else' ID and password without permission by their owner and attacks by exploiting weakness of the system, such as a security hole.

A wide spread of ”LOVE LETTER” virus was observed. Personal computers were infected via an E-mail message and infected PC files were destroyed, followed by a further spread through the address book contained in the infected PCs. Since the E-mail with a subject of ”I Love you” was sent to computer users, it was also called ”I LOVE YOU” virus. Despite the fact that it would not be able to inflect a computer unless the recipient of the E-mail message tried to open its attachment, tens of millions of computers were infected by the virus all over the world. It was because many recipients opened the file attached to the message automatically sent by the virus, which appeared to be sent from a known sender included in the user's address book. To make matters worse, the virus was written using a scripting language called ”VB Script” which allows easy modification, and a number of new varieties of the virus were developed and released.

Hosted by JPNIC, the sixth ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) meeting was held, for the first time in Japan, at Pacifico Yokohama convention center.

Distribution of beta version mDNkit developed by JPNIC started. It was a tool for DNS operators and application engineers to evaluate, on a trial basis, various schemes proposed as Multilingualized Domain Names (mDNs; this term was used to refer to internationalized domain names back then).

Tokyo Metallic Communications Corp. was established to provide Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) service to individuals.

Following the introduction of JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (JP-DRP) as a means for resolving disputes over JP domain names, the Industrial Property Arbitration Center (present Japan Intellectual Property Arbitration Center) was designated as a dispute resolution service provider. An agreement on JP-DRP was concluded with JPNIC.

The number of registered JP domain names exceeded 200,000, in two years after it reached 50,000 and only one year from 100,000 registrations.

Distribution of a prerelease version package of mDNkit, designed as a test tool for mDN (Multilingualized Domain Name) to be used by DNS operators and application engineers, began prior to its official release.

In the policy speech made at the Diet, ”e-Japan” strategy was announced by then Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. The strategy was designed with an aim of achieving Japanese IT Society where every citizen of the nation had access to utilize information and communication technology.

The Google service, which was recognized as one of the largest robot type search engines in the world, started to support Japanese language. It allowed Japanese people to search, in Japanese, enormous number of web pages which were crawled and indexed by Google.

Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (IIJ) providing Internet services launched the first IPv6 connection service in Japan called 'IPv6 Native Service.'

mDNkit package, designed as a test tool for mDN (Multilingualized Domain Name) to be used by DNS operators and application engineers, was officially released and distributed.

ICANN specified the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) as Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) for issues on gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains). Similarly, as a means for resolving disputes over JP domain names, JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (JP-DRP) was developed and implemented as the rules to be applied to JP domain names by JPNIC. The JP-DRP was a localized version of the UDRP.

Under the conventional JP domain names registration rules, transfer of JP domain names between users was, in principle, prohibited except for limited cases, such as a merger or sales of business to prevent domain names from being registered or used with a dishonest intention. However, subsequent to the introduction of the JP-DRP, the restriction was lifted.

KDDI Corporation was established, as a result of merger among DDI Corporation, Kokusai Denshin Denwa Co., Ltd. (KDD), and IDO Corporation.

A trial registration service for International Domain Names (IDN) in ”.com,” ”.net” and ”.org” domain names was launched by the U.S. corporation VeriSign, Inc.

One of the important objectives of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) founded in October 1998 was to add new gTLD (generic Top Level Domain). Domains of ”biz”, ”info”, ”name”, ”pro”, ”museum”, ”aero”, and ”coop” were approved by ICANN as the first seven gTLDs to be added.

With a view to application of Japanese domain names to general-use JP domain names as IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) (it was called ”multilingual domain” in those days), trial operation of Japanese domain names was launched. In the phase 1 of the trial, a test was successfully completed for name resolution on the domain names set as Japanese domain names.

Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) was established so that the new company would be able to provide the registration service for the general-use JP domain names upon their introduction, with a view to provide, in the future, registry services for all JP domain names, including organizational type and geographical type. As was expected, the registry services of JPNIC were taken over by JPRS in April 2002. Currently, JPRS is in charge of adminstration and management of JP domain names.

The ”Special Action Plan related to Cyber-Terrorism Measures for Critical Infrastructure” was developed by the National Information Security Promotion Council of the Cabinet Secretariat, with the objective of protecting critical infrastructure against cyber terrorism and preventing confusion or disorder in people's lives and social infrastructure of the country.

Following the trial connection service using Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) provided by NTT East and NTT West since December 1999, both companies started their official offering as a service called ”FLET'S ADSL” using regional IP networks.

Built on ”e-Japan” strategy of Japanese government, ”Internet Fair 2001 Japan” was held for a period of one year beginning December 31, 2000. It was an on-line event of virtual world exposition.

Wikipedia is the encyclopedia project in which a wide range of users add and compile contents themselves. At the beginning of the project, some concerns were raised by people who were wondering if there would possibly be users willing to add descriptions for lexical items or if the contents would be accurate enough. However, as of April 2013, over 25 million lexical items are present on various language versions of the encyclopedia.

Based on the ”e-Japan initiative” supported by Mori cabinet, the Basic Act on the Formation of an Advanced Information and Telecommunications Network Society (IT Basic Law) was put into effect. It was designed to create a society where every citizen of the nation can reap the extensive benefits of information and telecommunications technologies through freely and safely obtaining, sharing, and transmitting information on advanced information and telecommunications networks.

A new type of domain name called ”general-use JP domain name” was introduced. It is applicable to the 2nd level for registration, unlike conventional organizational-type/geographical type JP domain names used in the 3rd level, and is neither restricted to one registration for one organization nor is limited for certain types of organizations. Following the introduction of the new type of domain names, a preliminary registration application period in which registrants and proprietors of existing organizational-type/geographical type JP domain names can apply for a registration prior to a regular application period.

The number of registered JP domain names was drastically increasing in those days. It took only one year for the number to increase from 100,000 to 200,000 and additional five months to further increase to 300,000, compared to about 2 years required between 50,000 and 100,000.

Usen Broad Networks (now USEN Corporation) started to provide the first FTTH (Fiber To The Home) service in Setagaya-ku and a part of Shibuya-ku, Tokyo.

The JPNIC membership system was renewed and business delegation membership system was abolished. The IP address services previously provided by members and JPNIC membership qualification were separate. Accordingly, as a new mechanism for implementing IP address services, the IP Address Management Agent system was introduced. With the new system, being a member of JPNIC was no more required to provide IP address services.

In the past, annual membership fees for JPNIC regular members had been calculated according to the numbers of DNS connections. In the new membership system, members would choose one of the five categories: S, A, B, C and D. Similarly, the number of voting rights of regular members had been calculated according to the number of DNS connections. In the new system, each regular member would have one vote.

Following the introduction of the general-use JP domain names, an application period for concurrent registrations was launched, subsequent to preliminary application for registration. The concurrent registration application was a mechanism for relaxing competition among applicants on a first-come-first-served basis, and all the applications filed during a certain period were considered to be filed at the same time under the mechanism. In the case that more than one application were filed for the same domain name, the registrant for the name was decided by lot. Preliminary application and concurrent registration methods are now widely applied for gTLD registries as Sunrise and Landrush period at their service launch period.

The ”Act on the Modifications to Relevant Acts for the Use of Information and Communication Technologies in Delivery of Documents, etc. (Consolidated IT Document Act)” was put into effect for the purpose of promoting e-commerce and the like. The act allowed electronic means, without being based on physical documents, to be used in the business transactions where delivery of documents and/or procedures based on documents were conventionally required.

The ”Act on Electronic Signatures and Certification Business (e-Signature Act)” was put into force for the purpose of developing legal infrastructure for giving electronic signatures the same level of legal weight as hand-written signatures and personal seals in Japan.

Following the phase 1 launched in November 2000, the phase 2 of the trial operation of Japanese domain names was started. The trial operation of Japanese domain names was a test operation project on the premise of applying Japanese domain names to general-use JP domain names. Subsequent to the phase 1 where Japanese domain names were set up and name resolution tests could be performed, in the phase 2, the actual general-use JP domain names registered as Japanese domain names were registered to the JP DNS and relevant name resolution could be tested.

Following the preliminary registration in February 2001 and the application period for concurrent registration in March, JPRS started to accept applications for registration on the first-come-first-served basis. In this ordinary application process, anyone can apply for registration of general-use JP domain name, and applications are processed in the order of filing.

The power grid system of the power utility company operated in California, U.S. was illegal intruded. The incident raised social awareness on the real threat that could be posed by an attack on critical social infrastructure, such as power utility.

The number of registered JP domain names exceeded 400,000 in three months after it reached 300,000.

The newsletter service was famous in Japan, and its initial and second issues were distributed to 780,000 and 1.8 million subscribers, respectively. In particular, the column entitled ”Lion Heart” showing messages from prime minister Koizumi was quite popular in every issue.

NTT East and West announced that they would provide an optical IP communication service called B-FLET's in a full-scale.

The ”Code Red” worm spread to a vast range of computers, exploiting known vulnerability found in the Microsoft's web server software called ”Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS)” to infect more and more systems. As a result, difficulties in connecting to a host were observed everywhere.

Previously, JPNIC's business conduct and policies within its Board of Trustees principle desicion had been approved by the Steering Committee. Combining the approval function and organizational operation function of JPNIC, a new Executive Board was installed. Supplementing the reorganization, the Steering Committee was reformed to Policy Advisory Council which presents recommendations on the activities of JPNIC to the board in terms of growth of the Internet.

Japanese Domain Names Association (JDNA) was established as an organization aiming for wider use of Japanese domain names and development of relevant business. JPNIC also joined the association as its member. Shigeki Goto, president of JPNIC assumed the office of chairman of JDNA, and JDNA office was placed in the office of JPNIC.

In those days, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) was widely used as the algorithm to protect the security of wireless networks. However, a passive technique to attack the protection was released, and the key could be decrypted through tapping the network by exploiting the flaw on the specifications of the WEP. Since then, more effective technique for such an attack was developed one after another, which contributed to a shift from the WEP to a new alternative ”WPA/WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access)”.

DDI Pocket Inc. (currently, WILLCOM, Inc.) started to offer a full flat-rate plan called ”Tsunagi-hodai” as a part of its PHS data communication service ”AirH”. Although such a flat-rate service is currently very common, it was innovative to provide the mobile communication service where no additional charges other than the monthly flat-rate fee would be required no matter how much mobile Internet communication was made.

The ”Nimda” worm targeting the Microsoft Windows was released and quite a number of computers were infected quickly, more specifically, more than 20,000 units in 24 hours. The worm is considered to be the first worm created with a complex combination of conventional attacking techniques, including not only attacks on E-mail and network sharing but also infection by browsing infected web pages, exploiting software vulnerability, and using a backdoor created by another worm. New varieties of the virus were developed and continued to infect computers for a long time.

As part of the promotional and educational activities provided by JPNIC, an e-mail newsletters service entitled ”JPNIC News & Views” was launched. The e-mail newsletters provided various information such as activity reports, statistic information, and current topics on the Internet.

After foundation of Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) in December 2000, JPNIC and JPRS continued their respective operations in the same building. Namely, JPNIC was on the 1st floor, and JPRS's office was on the 2nd and 3rd floors of Fuundo Bld. However, JPNIC decided to move out to Kokusai-Kougyou-Kanda Bldg. in Uchi-Kanda, Tokyo.

auDA, the registry of ”.au,” and the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) concluded ccTLD Sponsorship Agreement for the first time among all Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD).

A third-generation mobile phone service, “FOMA” by NTT Docomo, compatible with the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 requirements issued by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), started service in the 23 boroughs of Tokyo, Yokohama City, and Kawasaki City. The simultaneous introduction of a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card enabled the use of multiple telephones on contract for a single phone line. Compared to the “mova” second-generation service, “FOMA” offered high-speed data communication of Mbps level. “FOMA” contributed to the popularization of mobile communication, with a flat rate data communication system being introduced in June 2004.

The international ”Convention on Cybercrime” designed for collaborative work by concerned nations to fight against international crimes committed on the Internet was proposed by the Council of Europe; and over 30 nations including Japan, North American nations, and European countries signed and adopted the convention. Since some adjustments and modification on national laws were necessary to implement the convention, it took a while before Japan ratified it on July 3, 2012 upon completion of relevant legislative development.

Windows XP, an OS aiming to integrate Windows 9x series for general users with Windows NT series for business users, was released.

As Windows XP gained enduring popularity even after the release of the next-generation OS, Windows Vista, it was used by many users for a long time, and its support period was extended until April 2014.

In preparation for transfer of JP domain names registration service from JPNIC to Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS), a memorandum of understanding was concluded between them.

The first JPNIC Open Policy Meeting was held at Pacifico Yokohama convention center in Yokohama as a program in Internet Week 2001. It was a meeting for participants to discuss management and administration issues on IP addresses and AS numbers, hosted by Policy Working Group operated by volunteers.

The ”Act on Special Provisions to the Civil Code Concerning Electronic Consumer Contracts and Electronic Acceptance Notice (Electronic Consumer Contracts Act)” was put into effect. The law, which was designed to protect consumers in e-commerce, sets forth remedies for the case where an offer of a contract is made by a mistake of a consumer in computer operation, a change of contract formation time of remote parties and so on.

A website called ”@Police” designed to provide various information on network security via the website was launched by the National Police Agency in Japan with the purpose of preventing network crimes.

The IODEF (Incident Object Description and Exchange Format Requirements) requirements were developed by a European research group ”Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association (TERENA)”. The requirements were designed to define a common data format for sharing information on incidents among the Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs).

Following the memorandum of understanding concluded in preparation for transfer of JP domain names registration service from JPNIC to JPRS in 2001, an agreement on transfer of administration and management services was concluded between the two parties. As a result of the agreement, JPRS was allowed to request ICANN to reauthorize JPRS to be responsible for JP domain name administration.

An FTTH (Fiber to the Home) service called ”eo Mega Fiber” was launched by K-Opticom Corporation.

Transfer of responsibilities to provide services for JP domain names, as ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain), from JPNIC (to be precise, from Jun Murai, president of JPNIC at the time, as a private individual) to Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) was approved by the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). Accordingly, the ccTLD Sponsorship Agreement regarding ccTLD registry services was concluded between ICANN and JPRS.

To be prepared for the case JPNIC need to make a re-delegation of the ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain) registry functions from Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) to another organization, an agreement between JPNIC and JPRS to establish an data escrow mechanism for JP domain names registry, in which data necessary for providing registry services was escrowed to a third party on a daily basis.

As a result of the transfer of the registration and management services on JP domain names to Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS), tasks and roles related to JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (JP-DRP) were divided into two groups: policymaking duties taken by JPNIC, and management and administration of domain name registrations taken by JPRS. Accordingly, the agreement on JP-DRP concluded between JPNIC and Japan Intellectual Property Arbitration Center (dispute resolution service provider of JP-DRP) was revised to be among the three parties, JPNIC, JPRS, and Japan Intellectual Property Arbitration Center.

As a meeting of the Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) in the Asia-Pacific region, the Asia Pacific Security Incident Response Coordination Conference (APSIRC) was convened in Tokyo hosted by JPCERT/CC.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., Inc. (TEPCO) started to provide ”TEPCO Hikari” as an FTTH (Fiber to the Home) service. After TEPCO's communication business was transferred to KDDI Corporation, the FTTH service was integrated into the service called ”au Hikari”.

In the past, AD.JP domain names were allowed to be registered for the ”networks all the members of JPNIC would operate.” Subsequent to the transfer of the JP domain names registration and management services from JPNIC to JPRS, the initial purpose of AD.JP domain names which was to be assigned to organizations administrating networks (Administrative organizations) was reminded and classes of organizations and qualifications for registration were reviewed. As a result, for not only JPNIC members but also others, such as IP Address Management Agent were allowed to use the domain names in their registrations.

The registration and management service for JP domain names were taken over by Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS). The services had been under control of JPNIC for over 10 years since its predecessor JNIC was established in 1991.

Escrowing data for JP domain names registrations, in which data necessary for providing registry services was escrowed to a third party on a daily basis, was started by JPNIC and JPRS, so that they could be prepared for redelegation of ccTLD registry functions from Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) to another organization, and ensure that the organization taking over the functions would smoothly start as a registry in order to secure robust and continued operation of JP domain name services.

As a National Internet Registry (NIR) responsible for managing and administering IP address and AS numbers in Japan, JPNIC decided to additionally provide security services aiming for achieving more secure infrastructure networks.

KDDI launched a third-generation service ”CDMA2000 1X” using a 1.25MHz band, in which voice communication based on line switching and 144kbps packet data communication were available.

The task force was designed to observe, analyze, and improve present conditions around DNS for optimum setup of DNS.

The ”Act on the Limitation on Liability for Damages of Specified Telecommunications Service Providers and the Rights to Demand Disclosure of Identification Information of the Senders (Provider Liability Limitation Act)” was put into force. The law sets forth provisions on a scope of liability for damages that ISPs have to take when certain rights have been infringed in a manner using specified telecommunications service, as well as on the grounds for disclosing relevant information when disclosure of identification information of senders is demanded.

In the late 1990s, H.323 was mainly used as the protocol for multimedia services such as voice and video communication; it was standardized by the Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) in November 1996.

However, in accordance with growing demand for voice and video communications such as IP telephones, “Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)” was defined as RFC 2543 in March 1999, as a simpler, extensible protocol more suitable for the Internet compared to H.323. RFC 2543 was then improved to RFC 326, and RFC 3261 was issued as a more appropriate protocol for multi-media communication.

SIP is an excellent protocol for interoperability, therefore various implementations have been developed by various companies since then. As a meeting platform for interoperability testing, the SIP Interoperabirity Test (SIPit) was held for the first time in April 1999. It had been held 31 times by the end of 2014, and SIPit18 and SIPit24 were held in Japan.

The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service has become a full-fledged service since the advent of SIP. A concise history of VoIP can be found at “A Guide to VoIP History - The Rise of VoIP”.

Considering the fact that practical problems were increasingly found in the IPv6 address policy continued to be used since the first allocation of the IP addresses from IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) to RIRs (Regional Internet Registries) on July 14, 1999, the IP address committee of JPNIC actively participated in three existing RIR forums, in collaboration with IPv6 Promotion Council, to lead discussions. Consequently, the IPv6 address policy to be followed by all RIRs was established as the first globally coordinated policy. It was implemented by APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre) on July 1, 2002.

The ”Act on Regulation of Transmission of Specified Electronic Mail” was put into effect along with the ”Act on Partial Amendment to the Act on Specified Commercial Transactions”, so that senders were obliged to follow certain rules. The former was designed to solve issues of spam mails which are, for example, an advertising message simultaneously sent to a large number of unspecified recipients.

The 54th IETF meeting took place at Pacifico Yokohama in Kanagawa prefecture. It was the first IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) meeting held in Japan.

”Incident Information Sharing and Analysis Center Japan (Telecom-ISAC Japan)” was established as a non-profit voluntary organization. The Telecom-ISAC Japan was later integrated into the Japan Data Communications Association in February 2005, and currently (in 2013) it is operated under the name of ”Telecom-ISAC Japan, Japan Data Communications Association”.

Trial services of a database called ”Internet Routing Registry (IRR)” were launched. They were designed to manage routing information on the Internet in a unified manner to achieve higher reliability.

JPNIC contributed to the meeting as a local host.

An Ordinance of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications was amended, and the assignment of telephone numbers starting with “050” for IP telephones started.

All root DNS servers were suffered from concurrent DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. The servers located in 13 sites in the world take a role of controlling the ”root zone” present on the top level of the DNS (Domain Name System) in a tree structure. As a result of the incident, 7 out of the 13 servers were impacted; however no issues which could be recognized by general users were caused.

Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) was approved by the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to be the Internet registry covering the Central and South American region. LACNIC is the fourth RIR (Regional Internet Registry), following American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC), and APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre).

In the past, attribute-type JP domain names ”GO.JP” and ”AC.JP” (originally targeted to advanced educational institutions, including private universities) were available for government agencies and independent administrative institutions, and national universities, respectively. However, local government agencies were not allowed to use organizational type JP domain names, and only local municipal entities domain names, a part of geographical type JP domain names, was available for them. To solve the inconvenience for legal governments, A new group of domain names ”LG.JP” was created.

IDN (Internationalized Domain Name), which was still under development by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), was not fully supported by different browsers, especially not by Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0/5.5/6.0 having the largest market share. Since such a situation would be an obstacle for the broader use of IDN in the future, a plug-in called ”i-Nav” that would make IDN be supported by Internet Explorer, was developed by the U.S. company VeriSign (the registry of ”.com” and ”.net”) In cooperation with Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS), the registry of ”.jp,” distribution of ”i-Nav” for Japanese JP domain names started.

Under IDN (Internationalized Domain Name), an IDN text is converted to ASCII characters, in accordance with certain rules, before they are used in communication to minimize an impact on the existing DNS space. RFC3454 ”STRINGPREP,” which set forth a normalization process for IDN texts, was issued as the first RFC for IDN.

JPNIC had been providing mDNkit, a ”mDN (Multilingualized Domain Name)” related tool kit designed for DNS operators and application engineers. As more standardization was developed, ”internationalization” was more targeted than ”multilingualization,” and the term ”multilingual domain name” was gradually replaced with ”internationalized domain name (IDN).” Accordingly, the name of the tool was changed to ”Internationalized Domain Name Tool Kit (idnkit).” Distribution of the first version of the idnkit, as a preview release version, was then started.

Next Generation Task Force was designed to foster and identify human resources who would be able to solve problems in the future Internet society.

Of three types of domain names ”.com,” ”.net” and ”.org” managed by the U.S. registry VeriSign, Inc., registration and management of ”.org” was transferred to Public Interest Registry (PIR) founded by ISOC (Internet Society).

A computer worm called ”SQL Slammer” targeting known vulnerability in SQL Server of the Microsoft Corporation was released, and a large number of servers were infected. AS the SQL Slammer consisted of very simple codes, exterminating the worm was quite easy. However, as it had strong infectability based on its feature to try to create a copy of itself and transfer it to a random IP address one after another, the number of infected servers reached into tens of thousands in only 10 minutes or so after the first infected computer was confirmed. It is said that most of the servers without proper measures against the vulnerability were infected by the SQL Slammer. In addition, caused by a vast amount of packets sent from the infected servers, a large number of routers were impacted, resulting in global network failures accompanied by transmission delays, etc.

Following the achievement of 50,000 in October 1998 and 100,000 about a year later in September 1999, the number of registered JP domain names exceeded 500,000 in three years.

When IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) is introduced, an IDN text is supposed to be converted to a statement composed of ASCII characters (ASCII Compatible Encoding, or ACE) before they are processed so that an impact on the existing DNS space is minimized. In the encoding, to distinguish the ASCII characters after conversion from the ones originally registered, the former follows a prefix composed of ”two alphabetical characters plus two hyphens.” The prefix remained determined until specifications for IDN were developed in order to prevent confusion at the time of introduction, and temporarily ”bq--” was used. After the IDN specifications were officially finalized and publication of relevant RFCs were schedule, IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) announced that ”xn--” would be the prefix for IDN.

Under IDN (Internationalized Domain Name), an IDN text is converted to ASCII characters, in accordance with certain rules, before they are used in communication to minimize an impact on the existing DNS space. Three Internet standards specifying the IDN specifications were issued, namely RFC3490 (clarification of IDNA, and framework of the entire IDN), RFC3491 (NAMEPREP; normalization through the procedures defined in RFC3454 (STRINGPREP) for IDN text), and RFC3491 (Punycode; encoding algorithm used in conversion from IDN text to ASCII characters).

The JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC), which had been operated as a private organization involved in activities on computer incidents as a CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team) in Japan, was incorporated, and was registered as a limited liability intermediate company ”JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC)”.

In response to the issue of RFCs related to IDN (Internationalized Domain Name), distribution of a release version of the IDN evaluation tool ”idnkit” which complied with the RFCs was started. The ”idnkit” is a tool designed for DNS operators and application engineers supplied by JPNIC.

New members-only webpages were created on the JPNIC website. JPNIC started to post contents designed exclusively for JPNIC members, in addition to information for general public.

The MySpace service gained its subscribers, mostly teenage music lovers, through Social Networking Services (SNS). While the service brought a merit in that users could make friends with many different people, some users were involved in crimes due to poor management of private information, etc. Accordingly, MySpace was recognized as one of social problems.

As the development of RFCs for IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) was completed, the trial service which provided the phase 1 from November 2000 and the phase 2 from May 2001 was ended. Registration and management for Japanese domain names became available as an official RFC-compliant service.

The trial operation for Japanese domain names was completed, after providing the phase 1 from November 2000 and the phase 2 from May 2001, step by step. The closure of the trial was due to completion of developing RFCs for IDN, and it was required to provide JP domain names services in accordance with technological standards. The JP domain names which completed the trial phases were expected to be on official services compliant to the RFCs.

The Blaster worm, which spread exploiting known vulnerability in the Microsoft Windows system, was developed and released. It could take over administrative rights of infected PCs as well as attempt a DoS (Denial of Service) attack to the Microsoft's Windows Update site on or after a predetermined date. The DoS attack itself was averted as a result of the efforts by Microsoft Corp. and other security venders; however, the number of infected PCs continued to grow.

Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS), which is the registry of JP domain names, started an operation where DNS servers for ”.jp” domain names were geographically distributed to Tokyo and Osaka, in collaboration with WIDE project. In parallel with the new operation, names of the six DNS servers operated back then were changed from different names determined by operating organization to more consistent ones, such as ”a.dns.jp” to ”f.dns.jp.”

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) was established as a working unit in the National Cyber Security Division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It was organized to improve approaches toward cyber security and manage cyber risks in the country.

An experimental group ”ENUM Trial Japan” was formed to officially work on demonstration experiments for ”Telephone Number Mapping (ENUM)”, which is a mechanism to obtain one or more available applications applicable to a telephone number in a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) format, by searching in DNS using the telephone number as a key.

The memorandum of understanding stating that Number Resources Organization (NRO) would be established as a function to coordinate RIRs responsible for managing IP addresses and AS numbers was prepared and signed by Axel Pawlik from Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC), Raul Echeberria from the Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional Registry (LACNIC), Ray Plzak from American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), and Paul Wilson from APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre).

A non-profitable organization to taking countermeasures against phishing called ”Anti Phishing Working Group (APWG)” was established in the U.S., and its first meeting was held in San Francisco.

Against a backdrop of growing commercial use of domain names and increased disputes caused by registrations of domain names with a dishonest intension, a seminar on disputes over domain names was held. It was designed to invite someone who had experience in an actual dispute to give a lecture covering from basic knowledge on the dispute resolution policy for domain names to the latest development of ruled cases in an easy-to-understand manner, as well as to let participants have deeper understanding in how to handle the dispute over domain names and how the domain names of corporations should be managed. The first session of the seminar was held at the conference room of JPNIC.

Based on the resolution of US General Assembly which took place between December 2001 and January 2002, it was resolved to hold a UN summit focusing on information society. The first meeting of the UN summit entitled ”World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)” was held in Geneva, Switzerland. The meeting discussed various themes related to the information society, and some problems were presented on how to manage Internet resources during one of the discussions. In response to the problems, the Internet governance working group (WGIG) directly reporting to Secretary General of the United Nations was organized to make further discussions over the issue. The established WSIS and the process toward Internet Governance Forum (IGF) led to the first IGF held in Athena, Greece in 2006.

The registration service for IDN (Internationalized Domain Name), provided on a trial basis, on ”.com” and ”.net” domain names, which VeriSign, Inc. was responsible for registration and management was developed to be compliant to RFCs.

Operation of the Internet Scan Data Acquisition System (ISDAS) was commenced. ISDAS is an Internet fixed-point observation system, in which JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) monitors infectious worm activities and scanning carried out to seek online weaknesses in Japan and abroad, using the sensors dispersedly deployed on the Internet.

Following up the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which took place in Geneva, Switzerland in December 2003 focusing on the information society, and the growing interest in the Internet governance observed at the summit meeting, a reporting session was held at Japan Education Center in Tokyo.

Facebook is a SNS (Social Network System) service which was started as a communication tool used to link friends on the campus. It has grown to be the largest SNS in the world as of April 2013.

A photo hosting service called ”Flickr” was launched.

There were 6 JP DNS' that were managing a name space for JP domain names to ensure redundancy. More specifically, they were ”a.dns.jp” operated by Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS), the registry of JP domain names and ”b.dns.jp” to ”f.dns.jp.” Aiming to achieve further improvement in reliability, IP Anycast technology was adopted to ”a.dns.jp” operated by JPRS and ”d.dns.jp” operated by Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (IIJ), so that it became possible to install plural DNS with the same name which could be distributed to be installed at more than one locations.

Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) being the registry of JP domain names launched ”Japanese JP Navi” service. The new service was to show users the web pages introducing how to set up a browser supporting a Japanese JP domain name in the case that a user tries to access a website using the Japanese JP domain name on a Japanese JP domain name not supporting IDN (Internationalized Domain Name), such as versions 6 and lower of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) comprising registries of ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain) and providing support for country code domain names was established. ccNSO was one of supporting organizations of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) responsible for globally managing Internet resources, such as domain names and IP addresses. In response to the new organization, Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) being a registry of JP domain names joined ccNSO as its member.

During a limited period from December 7, 2003 to March 15, 2004, application for new gTLDs, more particularly, sponsored gTLD to be operated in specific industry sectors/areas, was invited by the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers). As a result, ”asia,” ”.cat,” .” job,” ”.mail,” ”.mobi,” ”.post” and ”.tel (applied by two organizations),” ”.travel,” and ”.xxx” were announced to be applied for. These gTLDs were gradually increased after addition of ”.jobs,” and ”.travel” in April 2005; and they were brought into operation. Among the new gTLDs, ”.xxx” was proceeded to initial stage of contract talks between its registry ICM Registry, LLC (ICM) and ICANN on June 1, 2005. However, in March 2007, the application was rejected by ICANN, and subsequently, ICM filed an appeal with ICANN Independent Review Panel. Following the panel's ruling in favor of ICM, the domain name was finally approved, in March 2011, at the ICANN meeting took place in San Francisco.

For networks which use IP addresses for a special purpose including small multi-home, a service called ”special-purpose provider independent address assignment service” in which JPNIC assigns address provider independent addresses was started.

Guidelines for resolving issues around characters, which have equivalent or substantially equivalent meaning, to be used in IDN (Internationalized Domain Name), were published as RFC3743. The guideline document was called IDN-Admin (Guidelines for Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) Registration and Administration for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). It was a successful result of discussions and reviews mainly provided by Joint Engineering Team (JET) - technological investigation and review group of members from Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan.

The authentification for an IP address management agent in its application was changed from the method based on its E-mail address to the one using an ID/password.

The developer of the P2P file-sharing software for Windows called ”Winny” was arrested for alleged aiding of copyright violations. There had been a number of cases in which software users actually involved in illegal file exchanges were arrested for the copyright violation, but never been a case of arresting a software developer for aiding offenders, and the first case attracted controversy on the Internet. The developer was found guilty, in December 2006, at the Kyoto District Court; however, in the appeal court in October 2009, the Osaka High Court overturned the prior ruling and the defendant was acquitted. Subsequently, although the procedures further appealed the case to the Supreme Court, it was dismissed in December 2011 and his innocence was proven.

The IPv6 AAAA record of name servers for two Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs), namely ”.jp (Japan)” and ”.kr (Korea)”, was added to the DNS root zone, which allowed the TLDs to be fully compliant with IPv6 for the first time in the world.

After responsibilities for registration and management of JP domain names were transferred from JPNIC to Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) in April 2002, data of the JP domain name registry was secured, tentatively for the first two years, based on an escrow mechanism between JPNIC and JPRS, and JPNIC serves as an escrow agent as well as an auditor. Upon expiration of the tentative period, a new escrow agent was chosen from among the public, as scheduled, and a tripartite system with JPNIC, JPRS, and the escrow agent was started.

In the notice of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) on handling of vulnerability information, a specific mechanism and procedures from acceptance of the information to its publication were defined. The notice also designated the Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA) and the JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) as the agencies, respectively, for accepting and coordinating relevant information.

Some revisions were made to a fee structure, for example, ”IP address assignment fees” were replaced with ”IP address allocation fees.”

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corporation (NTT East), which provided the Fiber To The Home (FTTH) service called "B Flet's" to users, began also offering a FTTH phone service called “Hikari-Denwa” from September 1. This is an IP phone service, however users can use the "0AB-J" format phone numbers, emergency calls and additional services the same as conventional phone numbers like "03-xxxx-xxxx" in the Tokyo metropolitan area. On September 15, about two weeks later, NTT West also started providing the same service.

The ”Study Group on the handling of junk mails messages” was established by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC), and its first meeting was held. The group was developed for the purpose of discussing how to restrict and prevent distribution of the E-mail messages for advertising purposes sent without consent of recipients (”junk mail” or ”spam mail”), mostly appeared in text messages on mobile phones, in light of increasingly sophisticated and malicious ways of transmitting such messages.

An open-source web browser for Windows, MacOS, and Linux called ”Firefox 1.0” was released by The U.S. company Mozilla Foundation. 14 different language versions of the browser, including Japanese version, were simultaneously released.

Operation of the most recent IP registry system, which is still used in 2013, was launched. With the new system, an application related to an IP address and other internet resources can be filed by an IP address management agent or others using a On-line application system, in addition to the conventional method via e-mail.

”Telephone Number Mapping (ENUM)” is the mechanism designed to obtain one or more available applications applicable to a telephone number in a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) format, by searching in DNS using the telephone number as a key. ”ENUM Trial Japan (ETJP)” designed to provide technology verification on the ENUM published the second report containing accomplishment of its activities.

The Policy Working Group (Policy WG) was established as a group independent of JPNIC. The roles of the group include coordination of opinions from different communities, sorting out various consensus reached during the on-site forum (JPOPM) and on-line forum (IP-USERS Mailing List), and adequacy evaluations on the consensus in an objective manner, in the process of developing policies on IP addresses.

”VoIP/SIP Interoperability Task Force” was formed with 36 founders, including corporations, organizations, and individuals, and JPNIC and Mitsubishi Research Institute, Inc. (MRI) were designated to serve as its joint-secretariat. The task force was designed to support verification activities on interconnectability of VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol), or the technology for establishing voice communication over an IP network, such as the Internet and Intranet.

In addition to the RFC already published on IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) which discusses internationalization of domain names, RFC3987 Internationalized URI (IRI) was issued to standardize the components of URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) other than domain names aiming to internationalize the entire URIs. The IRI standard was required by Microsoft Corp. to modify its web browser Internet Explorer to be compatible with IDN. Once the RFC was published, IDN compatibility of web browsers was significantly advanced.

eAccess Ltd. established ”EMOBILE Ltd.” specialized in mobile communication services. The new company, later in March 2007, launched a HSDPA communication service called ”EM Mobile Broadband” with a maximum downlink speed of 3.6Mbps in urban areas of Tokyo 23 wards and cities of Nagoya, Kyoto, and Osaka.

The ”YouTube” video-sharing service, which is currently accessed by many users, was launched on the Internet.

The numbers of registered general-use and attribute-type JP domain names increased intensively to 338,865 and 328,716, respectively, in February 2005; compared to 317,455 and 327,742, respectively, in January. Registrations of the general-use JP domain names exceeded, for the first time since the launch of this type, the number of attribute-type and geographical type JP domain names.

The Telecom-ISAC Japan was integrated into the Japan Data Communications Association and became an incorporated foundation under the name of ”Telecom-ISAC Japan, Japan Data Communications Association”. The organization was initially founded in July 2002 and had continued its activities as a non-profit private organization until then.

Even after responsibilities for registration and management of JP domain names were transferred from JPNIC to Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) in April 2002, the information on IP addresses and JP domain names was provide by the same WHOIS service for the sake of users convenience. To be consistent with Act on the Protection of Personal Information, the system of WHOIS was divided to control the information on JP domain names separately from that on IP addresses. Accordingly, the information on IP address was allowed to be provided solely by JPNIC's WHOIS service; while information on JP domain names was allowed by JPRS's WHOIS service. However, in order to maintain user convenience, a gateway service (whois.jp) allowing to search both of the on JP domain names and IP addresses was released.

African Network Information Centre (AfriNIC) was approved by ICANN as the Internet registry in charge of the Africa region. It was the fifth RIR, in addition to American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC), APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre), and the Latin American and Caribbean IP address Regional Registry (LACNIC).

The ”Act on Utilization of Telecommunications Technology in Document Preservation, etc. Conducted by Private Business Operators, etc.” and ”Act on Arrangement of Relevant Acts Incidental to Enforcement of Act on Utilization of Telecommunications Technology in Document Preservation, etc. Conducted by Private Business Operators, etc.” were put into force. Implementation of the two laws, collectively called ”e-Document Acts”, allowed private business operators to store electronic records of information, in place of storing records on physical documents which had been required by laws.

Act on the Protection of Personal Information was fully enforced, imposing obligations on business entities handing personal information for more than a certain number of individuals. The law intends to protect private information from being misused for an unintended purpose and prevent poor data management by business entities handling personal information.

In terms of advancing e-commerce and ensuring information security, the ”Anti-Phishing Council” was organized on the initiative of some financial institutions and security-related organizations for the purpose of preventing larger damages from being caused by phishing.

The JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) launched an early monitoring service, in which cautions and information on relevant measures were provided prior to occurrence of an incident, based on gathered information and analysis results, etc. on traffic monitoring and vulnerability.

USEN Corporation started providing its broadband television service called ”GyaO”. The service was later integrated into ”Yahoo!JAPAN” operated by Yahoo Japan Corporation, and is currently provided as ”GyaO!”.

JPNIC had been providing, since January 2001, an agent service to make IPv6 address applications to APNIC on behalf of IP address management agents. The service was expanded allowing JPNIC to directly accept all IPv6 address-related applications. Along with the expansion of the service, JPNIC was allowed to accept an application from the organization which intends to be an IP address management agent after receiving new allocation of IPv6 addresses only, as well as form the organization which had already been allocated with IPv4 addresses. Furthermore, information search on additional categories, such as IPv6 address assignment, became available on WHOIS of JPNIC, as well as on the existing IPv4 address service.

The election of officers took place during the 26th General Meeting of JPNIC, and Shigeki Goto of Waseda University was appointed next president of JPNIC at the following board meeting.

With the cooperation of the National CSIRTs (Computer Security Incident Response Teams) in the Asia-Pacific region, the ”Asia-Pacific Internet fixed-point observation visualization project (TSUBAME)” was launched for sharing observation data obtained by participant organizations using sensors for the fixed-point observation system dispersedly deployed in overseas regions. The project was a part of the Internet fixed-point observation activities of the JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) to monitor infectious worm activities and scanning carried out to seek online weaknesses, using the sensors dispersedly deployed on the Internet.

Professor Jun Murai (Keio University), who was the head of WIDE project and the first president of JPNIC, won the Postel Service Award for the year 2005, during the 63rd IETF meeting held in Paris, France. The award was created by the ISOC (Internet Society) and named after Jon Postel who made great contribution to the growth of the Internet since the formation of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) and passed away suddenly in 1998. The award for the person who made significant contribution to the Internet was presented to the professor after six prior winners in the world and for the first time in Asia. He was highly appreciated for his efforts in the development and promotion of the Internet technologies, such as IPv6 as well as contribution to the growth and broader use of the Internet in the Asia Pacific region.

Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) was introduced to Swedish ccTLD ”.se”, for the first time in the world.

An experimental project was launched with cooperation by IP address management agent on a voluntary basis. It was intended for enhancement of user authentification on ”on-line application systems” and was designed to use ”digital certificate” in addition to a password on the on-line application system already adopted to IP address management.

After going through all the discussions in World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held by the U.N. in December 2003 focusing on the information society and the Internet governance working group (WGIG) organized following the summit, the 2nd WSIS took place in Tunis, Tunisia. In the Tunis meeting, ”Tunis summit documents (Tunis Commitment and Tunis Agenda)” including an agreement on the ”Internet governance” issues of the prominent concern during the discussions were adopted. Tunis Agenda requested to the U.N. Secretary General to set up a regular forum for multiple stakeholders to discuss the issues of Internet governance. As a result, the first meeting of Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was held Athens, Greece in October 2006.

A new allocation fee discount scheme was implemented, in which 90% of the IPv6 allocation fee was to be reduced if an IPv6 address space was allocated to an existing IPv4 infrastructure.

”Telephone Number Mapping (ENUM)” is the mechanism designed to obtain one or more available applications applicable to a telephone number in a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) format, by searching in DNS using the telephone number as a key. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) applied for delegation number space allocation (1.8.e164.arpadelegation) for the trial of ENUM in Japan to International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and it was officially approved in November 15, 2005. JPNIC was authorized by MIC to provide all the administration work for the ENUM trial DNS server, and started to accept application for registering numbers to be used ”Japan ENUM Trial.”

An owner of a phishing site was arrested, for the first time in Japan, by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department for alleged fraud and violation of the Act on the Prohibition of Unauthorized Computer Access. The website was masquerading as a famous auction site and suspected to have fraudulently obtained IDs and passwords of its visitors. This was the first phishing case arrested on the charge of fraud, although a similar phishing site case emerged in June 2005 in which the owner was charged with copyright violation.

In consequence of the disturbance in regular trading at Russian Stock Exchange caused by infected computer by a virus, trading in stocks and futures markets was partially suspended. The incident made the general public recognize that such a virus attack could give a great impact on the economic nerve, such as a stock exchange.

JPNIC had provided ”JPIRR test service” as a database service of IRR (Internet Routing Registry) that registers information on pathway control on the Internet since of August 2002. The JPIRR test service was intended for verification of the IRR service and accumulation experiences in IRR operation. In the IRR test service registration of route6object, which is the information representing prefix of an IPv6 address and AS number for route advertisement, was allowed.

JP DNS managing the name space for JP domain names was updated at a frequency of once a day. The interval of the DNS update was significantly reduced to approximately 15 minutes and, accordingly, a period of time until information registered by a user is reflected was significantly shortened. As a consequence, it became possible to start-up a new Webserver after registering a domain name, and modify DNS server setting more quickly.

Twitter is a microblog to which users can post their current state quickly and easily, and has been widely used to date.

JPIRR service is provided by JPNIC as IRR (Internet Routing Registry), aiming to establish a pathway control database with higher integrity by referring to the database of Internet registry which is a source of IP addresses. The service completed its trial phase, and provided as a regular service.

The sixth renewal of the memorandum of understanding (ICANN/DoC MoU), which was originally concluded in November 1998 between the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and U.S. DoC (Department of Commerce) and stated that both parties would work on defining their responsibilities and objectives to create and develop mechanisms and procedures, in collaboration, required for transferring the responsibilities of managing Internet resources to the private sector. At the sixth renewal, the memorandum was modified to be a document called ”Joint Project Agreement (JPA)”. In the past, ICANN/DoC MoU was afar the first two years, and thereafter every year; while the effective term of the new JPA was three years until September 30, 2009.

In the past, a key principle of ”one domain name per organization” was applied to organizational type JP domain names, and likewise to ”GO.JP domain names” used by government agencies. Since government agencies have affiliated research institutions and organization other than themselves, it was difficult to clearly determine an appropriate scope to be considered as one organization in terms of JP domain names registration. The restriction was relaxed and it was allowed to register more than one ”GO.JP” domain names under the same organization name.

After going through all the discussions in World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) held by the U.N. in December 2003 focusing on the information society and the Internet governance working group (WGIG) organized following the summit, the 2nd WSIS took place in Tunis, Tunisia. In the Tunis meeting, establishment of Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a forum for multiple stakeholders to discuss the issues of Internet governance was decided, and consequently, the first IGF meeting was held in Athens, Greece. The first meeting was not intended to make any binding resolutions or declarations, but was to serve as an initial stage of dialogue.

The ”Information Security Day” on February 2 was established by Information Security Policy Council of National Information Security Center (NISC) in the Cabinet Secretariat, with a view to widely spreading the momentum for enhancing information security all over the nation as well as raising awareness in the security and improving relevant understanding in a wide range of public and private sectors.

The number of registered general-use JP domain names exceeded a half million in five and half years since the registration of the domain started in 2001.

Internet Week celebrated its 10th anniversary. The event was initially called ”IP Meeting” and started in 1990. It was expanded in 1997, and the first meeting under the name of ”Internet Week” took place. Two years later, JPNIC started to host the event, and was held annually since then.

A video-sharing site called ”Nico Nico Douga” went live as a trial service. It featured the interface allowing viewers to directly post their comments on the viewed video on a real-time basis.

Presence of an information sharing website called ”WikiLeaks” was brought into public knowledge. The website, which was developed by an Australian journalist, Julian Paul Assange, was designed to anonymously share and disclose confidential information of a government or a corporation for the purpose of whistle-blowing and so on.

Following the incident occurred in October 2002, the root DNS servers in 13 locations in the world were again suffered from concurrent DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. The servers were controlling the ”root zone” which was on the top level of the DNS (Domain Name System) in a tree structure. 3 out of 13 servers were impacted; however, similar to the last time, any issues which could be recognized by general users were not caused. In response to the recurred attacks, redundancy operation by plural servers adopting the Anycast technology was implemented to some of the root servers.

Since route aggregation is more important with IPv6 than with IPv4, Provider Independent (PI) addresses were, in principle, not allowed when the policy was established. However, to remove the inconvenience that a PI addresses would not work in a network with a multi-homed connection, the policy was revised, allowing an assignment of PI address in IPv6 addresses.

The ”Ustream”, which is currently famous for a video-sharing service supporting streaming of videos, was launched, initially as a beta version service.

As a result of the growth of the Internet, it was expected that AS numbers might be exhausted due to the growing demands, as it was for IPv4 addresses. 4-byte AS numbers, which were in 4-byte (32-bit) representation and advanced from 2-byte (16-bit) representation, were assigned to those who requested.

IPv6-enabled Webservice and WHOIS service was started by JPNIC, and access to websites and WHOIS server through IPv6 became available.

The ”procedure for recovering deleted domain name registration” was introduced to general-use JP domain names, with which an unintentionally deleted domain name due to, for example, expiration of the registration or an incorrect application could be restored to the state before the deletion as far as certain procedures are followed.

With the purpose of enhancing information sharing and developing closer collaboration among the CSIRTs (Computer Security Incident Response Teams) in Japan, ”Nippon Computer Security Incident Response Team Association (Nippon CSIRT Association)” was established.

The policies were revised so that they would contribute to simpler and quicker procedures. As a result of the revisions, some provisions previously ambiguous were improved, leaving smaller room for wondering when making a judgment.

To be prepared for and overcome expected exhaustion of IPv4 addresses used in the Internet, discussions over relevant measures were started. In the general meeting held on June 15, 2007, a document entitled ”Exhaustion of IPv4 address pool of the Internet registry” was presented by JPNIC to make it stance clear.

JPNIC started to issue digital certificates, which are required when an application related to IP addresses and AS numbers is filed via on-line application system, to enhance authentification for the services on IP addresses. In addition to application via E-mail and with authentification by ID and password, an application authenticated by digital certificate was started

JPNIC started a trial mechanism for authorizing routing information, by using digital certificate technology, in order to reject abusive registration and then to avoid hi-jacking of IP address or routing information.

IPv6 addresses were added to the six root DNS servers including the M server, among 13 root DNS servers. Accordingly, it became possible to perform a name resolution with IPv6 from a root zone.

The number of JP domain registrations at last exceeded one million, in 16 years since the registration and management services for JP domain names were transferred to JNIC in 1991.

While a bill regarding ”prevention of access to harmful information by the youth” restricting the Internet use by the youth was going to be introduced to the ordinary Diet session by some members of the ruling party, JPNIC made a statement of concern on the bill. Although JPNIC had no objection to the idea that ”harmful information on the Internet and the adverse impact caused by such information must be addressed” included in the bill, there are some concerns on the details under discussions.

In the JPIRR service provided by JPNIC as a service using the IRR (Internet Routing Registry) database containing registered information on pathway control of the Internet, an experiment on notifying JPIRR registrants of route hijacks was started. The notification system was designed to work in collaboration with the route hijack detection system called ”Keiro-bugyo” operated by Telecom-ISAC Japan, and to notify users of ”a suspected route hijack” when routing information different from the JPIRR registration information was detected.

“Evernote” is a service with the basic function of a Web-based multimedia memo pad. It also owns dedicated clients for various connected terminals. Its greatest advantage is that centralized memos can be handled by any device. From the outset, Evernote has offered a text search function as it processes image data by optical character recognition (OCR). As Evernote uses the so-called freemium model, basic functions are free of charge, with extras such as priority processing and off-line processing available as optional fee based services.

Apple Inc. opened ”App Store” as an application delivery service for iPhones and iPods, accompanied by release of the iPhone 3G model.

The new technique that could significantly enhance efficiency in the ”DNS cache poisoning” attack compared to its conventional way was released by a U.S. security researcher Dan Kaminsky. The DNS cache poisoning was designed to accumulate fake DNS information on a cache server to guide communication of a user to a different site. The new method was named ”Kaminsky attack” after its inventor, and DNSSEC (Domain Name System Security Extensions) came under the spotlight as a fundamental measure against the attack.

A report was compiled and published by JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) to inform realities on targeted attacks and possible measures against them that companies would be able to take.

“Dropbox” is an online storage service which synchronizes files in a specific directory and files on a server automatically. It enables the same files to be accessed from different devices, a record of the update history of files, and the ability to release specific files. This easy-to-use client made online storage familiar to the world.

The task force was formed to help players in the Internet sector to: share the critical situation about the exhaustion IPv4 addresses; understand that it could pose a great impact on the Internet, which already played an important role as part of the social infrastructure, and the businesses operated the Internet; and collaborate and cooperate one another to promote Internet-related measures and handling. It was founded by a Telecom/Internet association including the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC).

The Council of Anti-Phishing Japan published ”Anti-Phishing Guidelines” as the Japan's first comprehensive guidelines on phishing.

Identification of assignees of ”Provider Independent (PI) addresses with historical development (historical PI addresses)” which had been assigned before implementation of Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR), and started in December 2004, was completed. The historical PI addresses which were turned out to be not in use and owners of which were not reachable were collected. As a result, approximately 320,000 IP addresses in 119 assignments to 105 organizations were collected.

The ”Gumblar” attacks widely spread. The attack was designed to infect visitors of a website by a malware, through improperly obtaining an ID and a password for uploading web contents to a FTP server, altering the website, and embedding an attack code by JavaScript. Unwanted alterations were made on a great number of websites and numerous PCs were infected as a result of the attacks.

A research software tool designed for targeted-email attacks was released as a free-of-charge version for training. It was developed by the JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) for research purpose and used by the organization.

The 21st Annual Conference of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST) took place in Kyoto for the first time in Japan, locally hosted by JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC). The FIRST is a forum established to facilitate information exchange and collaboration among CSIRTs (Computer Security Incident Response Teams) in different nations.

The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and the U.S. DoC (Department of Commerce) signed a document called ”Affirmation of Commitments (AoC)”. It was designed for defining responsibilities both parties would need to take and their objectives in order to collaboratively develop mechanisms, methods, and procedures required for transferring management of the Internet resources to the private sector. The agreement on AoC was to replace the ”Joint Project Agreement (JPA)” also concluded between ICANN and DoC for the same purpose which was about to expire after 3 years of its effective term. However, unlike JPA, AoC did not define its expiration date, and, it had a mechanism which puts more emphasis on autonomy of ICANN in place of the evaluation on ICANN regularly carried out by DoC. In this respect, the commitments document made a significant step toward the intended transfer to the private sector, compared to the previous JPA.

”Japan Internet Domain Name Council” was co-founded by several Japanese Internet related organizations, and JPNIC joined it as one of board members. The foundation was achieved in response to the report entitled ”Internet Policy in the 21st Century (Information and Communications Council consolation No. 3 in 2001) - Proposal for the Introduction of Top Level Domain Names” published by Information and Communications Council of Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) in July 2009. In the meetings of Japan Internet Domain Name Council, introduction of Internationalized country code top-level domain (IDN ccTLD) to Japan was discussed.

Windows 7 was released as the successor to Windows Vista. The version number of the OS is 6.1, but it was named Windows 7 as it was the seventh client-targeted OS released by Microsoft.

The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) started to accept applications for Internationalized country code top-level domain (IDN ccTLD) based on the ”Fast Track” process. Fast Track is the process in which a limited number of TLDs (Top Level Domains) with comparatively less problems are introduced based on a interim policy, not on a permanent policy.

A computer worm called ”Conficker” targeting Microsoft Windows was widespread, and large-scale infection involving millions of computers was caused. The Conficker worm was developed with a combination of multiple malware techniques, and many varieties were also found. It exploited vulnerabilities in the Windows system to grow the number of infected machines, while disabling their security measures. Consequently, the worm became a major threat which was very difficult to take countermeasures. During the pandemic, scanning of TCP Port 445, which was suspected to be caused by the activities of the Conficker, sharply increased, and such phenomenon was also observed by the Internet fixed-point observation system operated by the JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC).

The 76th IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) meeting took place at ANA Crown Plaza Hiroshima hotel in Hiroshima Prefecture. It was the second IETF meeting held in Japan.

The identification of assignees of historical AS numbers, which started in 2009, was completed by JPNIC after collecting the AS numbers that turned out to be not in use and the owners of which were not reachable. As a result, five AS numbers were collected.

ProPublica", a non-profit online media, which specializes in research and news reporting and is located in the United States, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, which is considered the highest honor in the news industry. The prize-winning article was "The Deadly Choices at Memorial", which reported the story of a hospital visited by Hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans in 2005.

Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting: Deadly Choices at Memorial

The Deadly Choices at Memorial

JPNIC started, in September 2008, issuing digital certificates which were required for IP address management agents to use on-line application systems and had been working on switching to the systems based on the digital certificates. Upon completion of the development of new systems, application via e-mail as well as authentication on the application using an ID and password were replaced with the application using digital certificate.

Internationalized country code top-level domains (IDN ccTLDs) for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates were registered for the first time in the root zone.

The JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) was certified as CNA (CVE Numbering Authority) by MITRE Corporation in U.S. which operates and administers the database of known vulnerability information called ”CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures)”. A certified CNA is allowed to assign a CVE number, at its discretion, to vulnerability-related information reported by partners in Japan and from overseas. It was the second CNA certification granted to a third-party coordinating organization, following the first one to the CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC) being a U.S. CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team), and was the first case in Japan.

Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) signature using a public key was added to the root zone present at the top level of DNS.

Following the recommendation on the proposals presented at the 17th JPNIC Open Policy Meeting, distribution of IPv6 addresses in a simplified manner was allowed. More specifically, any organization which was allocated IPv4 addresses by JPNIC in the past is allowed to receive IPv6 address in the minimum unit after submitting a relevant application.

As a result of an attack by a virus called ”Stuxnet” targeting Microsoft Windows system, centrifuges for uranium enrichment in the Iranian nuclear fuel facility were forced to be turned off. The Stuxnet was considered to be the first malware targeting industrial control systems. Since it was infectious via removable media, such as USB media, even the computers which did not have an access to the Internet were infected. In addition, the virus attracted more public attention after the Iranian government suggested that it might have been a cyber attack by the western countries as the infection had spread disproportionately in certain regions.

The registry of ”.日本,” which is an internationalized country code top-level domain (IDN ccTLD) was selected from among the public candidates by Japan Internet Domain Name Council, and Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) was appointed as the registry.

”.net” under the registration and management service provided by VeriSign, Inc. in the U.S. became one of DNSSEC-supported domains.

“Xi” is the name of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) service of NTT Docomo which enables data communication with a downlink speed of 37.5-150 Mbps according to its standards. First, it started offering coverage in the main areas of Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. "Xi" used the existing FOMA network for its voice communication at first, then the number of connected terminals which use the Xi network for voice communication increased gradually following the launch of the VoLTE service in June 2014.

DNSSEC was implemented to the JP domain registration and management services.

”.com” also under the registration and management service of VeriSign, Inc. became one of DNSSEC-supported domains, lagging three month behind ”.net.”

JPNIC did not keep its own address pool but shared one with APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre). As a result of the exhaustion of APNIC address pool, JPNIC ended its ordinary IPv4 address allocation service.

Caused by a illegal unauthorized attack on known vulnerability in the online network service operated by a major game console manufacturer, a large amount of personal information of users including their IDs, names, addresses, and E-mail addresses was leaked to outside of the company. It is said that the attack was made by the international hacker group ”Anonymous”, and it turned out to be a huge-scale data leakage case involving tens of millions of victims.

Japanese version of the online storage service "Dropbox" of Dropbox in the United States was released.

KDDI Corporation started a dual stack service as a part of its fiber-optic Internet connection service called ”au Hikari”. In the new service, connection with IPv6 addresses became available in addition to the conventional connection with IPv4s.

In response to the exhaustion of the IPv4 address pool of IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), a trial event called ”World IPv6 Day” took place. It was a 24-hour event in which the websites of participants, mainly contents providers running web services, were modified to support IPv6 on a trial basis, for the purpose of facilitating smoother implementation of IPv6.

“LINE” is a text-based chat form of social network service and was developed by the Japanese subsidiary of the Korean corporation “NHN Japan Corporation”. It attracted public attention immediately after the service was launched, and the number of users has increased by 10 million every month, exceeding 200 million in June 2013 and 300 million in November of the same year.

NTT East and NTT West launched a new Internet connection service as a part of ”FLET'S Hikari Next” service provided by both companies. The new service adopted the PPPoE connection method with IPv6 addresses (IPv6 PPPoE, or IPv6 ”tunneling”) in addition to the conventional method with IPv4s.

NTT East and NTT West launched a new IPv6 IPoE connection service.
Following the launch of IPv6 PPPoE connection service in June, both companies commenced their Internet connection service adopting IPoE (IP over Ethernet) with IPv6 addresses (IPv6 IPoE, or ”native” IPv6 connectivity), as a part of their ”FLET'S Hikari Next” service.

As a result of implementing the IPv4 address transfer request process, it was allowed to transfer IPv4 addresses between designated IP Address Management Agents under the control of JPNIC and assignees of Provider Independent (PI) addresses with historical development (historical PI address) or special-purpose PI addresses.

As a result of the targeted cyber attacks on Japanese companies including defense contractors, information on defense equipment and nuclear plants was stolen from some of the companies infected by the released virus.

Japanese House of Representatives and House of Councilors suffered from a cyber attack which was suspected to be a targeted attack. Dozens of computers were infected by the released virus in respective Houses, resulting in the suspected E-mail and data leaks. Unlike conventional ones staged for the amusement of hackers, it is considered that the attack was launched with an intention of stealing critical national information, as was in those on the defense contractors took place prior to the incident.

The third application period, following the first one in 2000 and second one in 2003, for new gTLD was launched. The third period was processed in accordance with an implementation guidance called ”New gTLD” program. Unlike the previous two periods, third one was characterized in that any applications for registration could be accepted as far as they were filed in accordance with the guidance unless they had particular problems.

With the aim of ensuring security of the control systems for critical infrastructures, the Control Systems Security Center (CSSC) was established as an organization authorized by the Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry in accordance with the ”Act on Technology Research Association”.

Several hundred thousand computers were suspected to be adversely impacted due to globally widespread infection by a malware called ”DNS Changer”. It was initially found in 2007 and designed to modify DNS settings on inflected computers. In Japan, as it was suspected that quite a few PCs had been infected, JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) issued an alert on the malware.

The Huffington Post was the first news blog to win the Pulitzer Prize, which is considered the highest honor in the news industry. The prize winner was "Beyond The Battlefield", a series about wounded veterans which journalist David Wood started in October 2011.

Beyond The Battlefield

In the annual meeting of ISOC (Internet Society) convened in Geneva, Switzerland, the ”Internet Society's Hall of Fame” list was published to celebrate its 20th anniversary and 33 people were listed. Among the 33 on the list included Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn recognized as the ”Fathers of the Internet”, Jon Postel who made significant contributions in standardization of the Internet, and Tim Berners-Lee who created a concept of HTML that played a leading role in the development of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). Toru Takahashi was selected from Japan as well for his devotion toward broader use of the Internet in Japan and Asian region. In 2013, a list of 32 ”Hall of Fame” inductees was published in addition, which included two Japanese, namely, Jun Murai who was the first president of JPNIC and Haruhisa Ishida who was a former board member of the center.

It was adopted at the 44th JPNIC ordinary general meeting held on June 16, 2011 that maintenance fees should be charged to assignees of Provider Independent (PI) addresses with historical development (historical PI addresses) and AS numbers. The new fee structure came into effect on April 1, 2012.

With a view to ”supporting IPv6 as the standard”, new ”World IPv6 Launch” initiative where systems were modified to support IPv6 permanently, not on a one-day trial, was commenced. The initiative followed the prior trial event ”World IPv6 Day” took place in June 8, 2011, specifically, a 24-hour event in which services of participating business operators were modified to support IPv6 on a trial basis, for the purpose of facilitating smoother implementation of IPv6.

The geographical type JP domain names were restructured to create new prefecture type JP domain names, followed by a priority registration application period in which proprietors can apply for a registration.

As Japan completed necessary legislation improvements to implement the ”Convention on Cybercrime”, an international convention drawn up by the Council of Europe in 2001, a letter of acceptance was sent from Japan to the Secretary General of the Council to ratify the convention. Accordingly, the convention took effect in the country as of November 1, 2012.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) and Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) established the ”Cyber Attack Analysis Council”, in cooperation with four organizations, namely, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA), Telecom Information Sharing and Analysis Center Japan (Telecom-ISAC Japan), and Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC). The new council was designed to understand exactly how the cyber attacks are developing and relay the information to concerned government ministries and major infrastructure providers, etc.

IPv4 address pool of Reseaux IP Europeens (RIPE) region, or Europe, was exhausted, and RIPE became the second RIR (Regional Internet Registry) with empty pool following APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre). Accordingly, RIPE NCC (RIPE Network Coordination Center) started to proceed with the allocation of the last remaining /8 blocks.

Following the introduction of the prefecture type JP domain names, an application period for concurrent registrations was launched, subsequent to the priority application for registration. The concurrent registration application was a mechanism for relaxing competition among applicants on a first-come-first-served basis, and all the applications filed during a certain period were considered to be filed at the same time under the mechanism.

Windows 8, the successor to Windows 7, has greatly changed the interface of the Windows series OS to one using a touch panel, clearly influenced by the spread of smartphones and tablet PCs.

Amazon com., a major online mail order company in the U.S., launched the "Kindle Store" for selling digital books, etc. in Japan.

The incident caused by the ”Remote Control Virus” hit the headlines in Japan. The malware was designed to send a request to a different website to post a fake message there, exploiting the vulnerability of CSRF (Cross Site Request Forgeries). The attack technique itself was not new; however, the vulnerability came to public attention after the police investigations on the Remote Control Virus cases that involved threats of an indiscriminate murder.

The Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet opened an official account on "LINE", a social media, and launched an information service regarding policy, immediate issues in the Cabinet and disaster information, etc. In the previous month of September, the number of LINE users exceeded 60 million worldwide and more than 28 million in Japan, or approximately one-fifth of the total population.

An ordinary registration application period for the prefecture type JP domain names was started, in which applications for domain names registration were processed on the first-come-first-served basis.

The official "Facebook" page was launched to bring forward the basic philosophy of Shinzo Abe, the then-Prime Minister as of January 2013, and to share policies being addressed by the Cabinet as well as daily news of the Cabinet with photos and videos. By June 2015, 310,000 people had "Liked" it.

The revised fee structure was applied to IP address management agents and assignees of PI addresses for a special purpose. The revision was adopted at the 48th JPNIC extraordinary general meeting held on December 7, 2012, and implemented on April 1, 2013.

To be consistent to the reformed public interest corporation system, JPNIC filed registration of dissolution and organizing registration for new Japan Network Information Center with a juridical personality as a general incorporated association.

Revisions on the Public Officers Elections Act were put into force, and the ban on election campaign using the Internet was partially lifted. In the legislation, campaigns utilizing some types of internet media, such as websites and SNS, are allowed in a certain scope.

Since the Inter-Registry Transfer Policy was implemented in August 2011, transfer of IPv4 addresses was only allowed between two organizations under the management of JPNIC. However, the rule was extended to cover registries in other regions where international transfer would be possible. The IP address transfer to/from organization supervised by ARIN and APNIC was allowed as of June 3, 2013.

10 organizations (IAB/ICANN/IETF/ISOC/WSC and 5 regional Internet registries (RIR)) which coordinate the global Internet technical infrastructure, issued a joint statement, "Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation" to show their common commitment towards the four themes, "Globally well balanced Internet management", "Internet Governance", "Globalization of ICANN and IANA function" "Transition to IPv6", attracting the interest of Internet managers.

As a result of the "New gTLD program" of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) which began accepting applications in early 2012, the first 4 gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains) were added in the root zone

According to a policy to handle Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) with precedence, four new gTLDs which were all IDN and "شبكة (means "web/network" in Cyrillic alphabet)", "онлайн (means "Online" in Cyrillic alphabet)", "сайт (means "Site" in Cyrillic alphabet )", and "游戏 (means "Game" in simplified Chinese characters)" were added.

“Google Glass” is a wearable eyeglass device produced by Google, a major U.S. company known for its search engine. The experimental product raised fears that photos and videos could be taken unknowingly, causing concerns over privacy.

As the Copyright Act was revised, the right of publication which used to be applicable only to paper versions, was extended to electronic publishing such as CD-ROM and transmission through the Internet.

With the enforcement of the revised Copyright Act, a data transmission service was launched. This service transmits to public libraries those materials digitized by the National Diet Library that cannot be obtained by other means, for reasons such as being out of print. Accordingly, materials previously only available at the National Diet Library can now be accessed at local public libraries.

Two new geographic generic Top Level Domains (gTLD), “.tokyo” and “.nagoya”, were delegated according to the new gTLD program conducted by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from the start of 2012.
These were the first new gTLDs delegated to Japanese applicants.

11 organizations (IAB/ICANN/IETF/ISOC/WSC/LACTLD and 5 regional Internet registries (RIR)) which coordinate global Internet technical infrastructure, issued "Statement from the I* Leaders Coordination Meeting, Santa Monica, 14 February 2014" stating their common view that there has been significant momentum and progress since the "Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation" was issued on October 7, 2013.

Impress R&D, jointly with the Internet Association Japan (IAjapan), JPNIC, and Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS), launched the website "Internet White Paper Archives" offering back numbers of the "Internet White Paper" issued since 1996 for free.

Mt. Gox, a bitcoin exchange based in Tokyo, went bankrupt as a result of financial difficulties triggered by the loss of a large amount of bitcoins estimated to be worth up to 1.6 billion yen by unauthorized access. Bitcoin is a virtual currency which was first suggested in a thesis published in 2008, and is characterized by not being issued by a central bank as for existing currencies. Since starting operation in 2009, the amount in circulation and the market value of bitcoins surged, and some of the leading services have started receiving requests for settlement in bitcoins, attracting widespread attention.

The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has announced its intention of transferring its responsibility for the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet to the global multi-stakeholder community.

Experts in Internet routing held discussions to clarify the present condition of Internet Routing Registry (IRR) and Resource PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) and to provide information, which was published as "IRR/RPKI Survey Team Activity Report".

“.Okinawa” was delegated as a new geographic generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) based on ICANN's new gTLD program starting at the beginning of 2012. “.Okinawa” became the third new gTLD following “.Tokyo” and “.Nagoya”.

“.Dnp” was assigned to Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP) as the first brand gTLD in Japan based on ICANN's new gTLD program started at the beginning of 2012. In this new gTLD program, the so-called “brand TLD” was introduced, for registration for self-use purposes such as by companies. “.Dnp” became the first brand gTLD delegated to a Japanese applicant.

At the initiative of the Brazil Government, a meeting called "Global Multi-stakeholder Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance (NETmundial)" was held to discuss the principles and future of Internet governance. The meeting produced the ”São Paulo Multi-stakeholder Statement”.

The late Dr. Masaki Hirabaru, the founder of JNIC (predecessor of JPNIC) and the first chairman of the JPNIC Steering Committee, was listed as one of the 24 members in the "Internet Society's Hall of Fame" published by ISOC (Internet Society).

The "one registration for one organization" principle applied to organizational-type JP domain names and geographic-type JP domain names was relaxed to allow an organization to register multiple organizational-type or geographical-type JP domain names for reasons such as a change in organization name, merger, or assignment of business.

Two new geographic generic Top Level Domains (gTLD), “.Ryukyu” and “.Yokohama”, were delegated according to the new gTLD program conducted by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from the start of 2012.

According to the New generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) program implemented by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the addition of new gTLDs commenced from October 2013. This caused the risk that domain names used in internal networks, etc. by the judgement that "This does not exist in the existing TLD", might overlap with the same character string newly added as a new gTLD. Therefore, DNS experts analyzed the situation and produced the report "Name collision problem triggered by the mass introduction of the new gTLD and the measurement" and set up a website summarizing information regarding this problem.

“Kake-hodai”, as its name shows, is a flat rate telephone service offered by NTT Docomo. It is characterized by a basic contract, not an optional contract which needs an additional subscription. It is innovative that in the “Xi” service, which is a Long Term Evolution (LTE) service offered by NTT Docomo, there was no choice other than “Kake-hodai”. As it meant that telephone bills increased significantly for users mainly using data communication, it was not popular with some users, but the number of contracts exceeded 3 million on June 10, 2014 immediately after the service launch, and exceeded 20 million on June 6, 2015. As NTT Docomo currently has approximately 66.6 million contracts, "Kake-hodai" accounts for approximately 30 percent.

Before this time, sales through the Internet have not been allowed except for category 3 OTC drugs. Following this revision of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act, while the new classification of "pharmacist's intervention required medicines" was established for drugs that require particular attention in use, sales through the Internet of all category 1 to 3 drugs was allowed under certain conditions.

The Internet Governance Conference Japan (IGCJ) was established to form the basis of discussions on Internet governance in Japan, issue proposals and provide the international community with information on various issues, as well as implementation in Japan.

VOLTE is a service offered by NTT Docomo that implements voice communication by Long Term Evolution (LTE) packet communication. Compared to the circuit switched system of FOMA, the sound quality is better and the delay is shorter, thanks to sending higher frequency sound. The circuit-switched network is likely to be replaced and all communications will be packetized in future.

To each Autonomous System, which is a collection of networks managed by a uniform management policy, a number called an AS number is assigned as a code to identify the network. A system that allows transfer of this number to another was started. With the introduction of this transfer system, transfer of AS number between the assignee under the control of JPNIC and the assignee under the control of APNIC became possible.

In the past, IPv4 addresses returned to JPNIC were pooled without being reused, but under this system, returned IPv4 addresses can be re-allocated. When re-allocation was introduced, it was decided that a maximum of /22 of IPv4 addresses per organization besides a maximum of /22 (1,024 addresses) per organization from the last /8 will be allocated.

As well as other domain names, publication of the registrant’s data is also a principle of JP domain names. However, a function that enables a registrant to hide their name under certain conditions was introduced.

Since its first draft published in January 22, 2008, work on establishing HTML5 took a long time and finally a recommendation was produced. Compared to HTML 4.01, the key changes are consideration for web application development and multimedia capability. There were other additions and removals, change of the usage of tags, and guidance on the usage of tags. It is compatible with major Web browsers as of 2014 and is becoming more popular.

A trial offer of an information system called "ROA public cache server", which effectively identifies incorrect wrong routing information, was started by Internet Multifeed Co. and JPNIC. This service enabled verification of correct combination information of IP address and Autonomous System(AS) number, called Route Origin Authorization (ROA).

In the past, the "Recovering registration service" made it possible to cancel the deletion of domain names in case of unintended deletion of domain names by the registrant, for example. This service used to be offered for general-use JP domain names only, but was extended to organizational-type JP domain names and geographic-type JP domain names.

In the prefecture-type JP domain names using prefecture names to the second level domain label, not only the existing domain names which use ASCII characters such as "tokyo.jp" and "kyoto.jp", but also domain names composed of Japanese character such as "東京.jp" and "京都.jp" were permitted.

JPNIC and Japan Registry Services Co., Ltd. (JPRS) published the Web document titled "History of Internet Resources Management in Japan - Focusing on Domain Names and IP Addresses -". This is based on the booklet "A 20-year history of JPNIC and the Japanese Internet" issued in 2013, in which considerable revisions were made and references were added.

A geographic generic Top Level Domains (gTLD), ".Osaka", was delegated according to the new gTLD program conducted by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from the start of 2012.

A geographic generic Top Level Domains (gTLD), ".Kyoto", was delegated according to the new gTLD program conducted by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) from the start of 2012.

APRICOT-APAN 2015 was held in JR Hakata City and Fukuoka Convention Center as the Asia Pacific Regional INTERNET Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT) meeting after ten years in Japan, and as a second co-hosted meeting with APAN(Asia Pacific Advanced Network) after four years since the last co-hosted meeting in Hong Kong. JPNIC supported the meeting as a member of the APRICOT-APAN 2015 Japan Executive Committee.

Linked with the database of registered information of resource holders of IP addresses and Autonomous System (AS) numbers, the Resource PKI (RPKI) system, which issues electronic certification of allocated IP address numbers, was started as a trial. RPKI can detect when an IP address is used by a network other than the correct resource holder and can prevent the impact spreading over the Internet by using network devices.

Japanese Generation Panel (JGP) was established by IDN expert volunteers to examine rules for introducing Japanese label to Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) in the new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) and was approved formally by The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

NTT DoCoMo’s Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO), SORACOM Inc., has launched its own Internet of Things (IoT) platform called “SORACOM Service”, which is fully optimized for IoT devices and can be used with only a small initial investment. SORACOM has also started providing both SORACOM Air, which is a mobile communication service deployed on SORACOM, and SORACOM Beam, which is a data transfer support service.

The game of Go was long considered a difficult target for AI systems, but AlphaGo, an AI system developed by Google, beat the top Go player in the world with a resounding four wins and only one loss with no handicap. AlphaGo’s algorithms are not programmed directly by humans but rather by machine learning techniques using artificial neural networks to determine the next move. This globally recognized event has triggered brand new interest in the study and application of neural networks.

The Civil Aeronautics Act was revised during the National Assembly on September 4, 2015, and was enacted on December 10, 2015 due to the rapid spread of small unmanned aircraft, i.e., drones and subsequent problems originating from them. Furthermore, to restrict drone flight in specific airspaces including Parliament, the Prime Minister’s official residence, diplomatic establishments, nuclear sites, and other important facilities, an additional law to ban drones was enacted and took effect from April 7.

“Fintech” is a term used to denote the combination of “Finance” and “Technology,” which includes different ways to create new services using information technology in conjunction with financial services, thereby creating such new services as electronic settlement services. Following growing interest in the Fintech area, the FinTech Center was established on April 1, 2016 within the Bank of Japan’s Settlement Bureau.

Dr. Suguru Yamaguchi, a professor at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Graduate School of Information Sciences and a Board member of JPNIC, passed away at the age of 53. Dr. Yamaguchi worked for the establishment of the JPCERT Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) and served as the first information security aide within the Information Security Measures Promotion Office of the Cabinet Secretariat. In addition, Dr. Yamaguchi served as JPNIC Board member for 14 years, playing a leading role in crucial tasks involving certification and security.

A smartphone game called “Pokémon GO,” developed by Niantic and The Pokémon Company, was released in Japan on July 6, 2016. Prior services were already available in United States and in the different parts of the world. This game allows the users to advance the game by using AR technology to navigate in real space with the addition of the widely popular pocket monsters. At the time of release, many people enjoying their summer vacation with their smartphones in hand, played Pokémon GO, flocking to parks and encountering Pokémon pocket monster within the real-world landscape around them.

The Country Code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) assigned to Japan, i.e., “.jp,” was delegated from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) thirty years ago on August 5, 1986 to Dr. Jun Murai, who later served as the Chairman of the JPNIC. On April 1, 2002, the Japan Registry Service Co., Ltd. (JPRS) succeeded in the role of registration and management of the .jp domain from the JPNIC.

The LINE Corporation recently started their “LINE Mobile” service as an NTT DoCoMo-based Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). They characterize their new service by not pricing their service based on traffic but rather on access to the service, which is a Social Networking Service (SNS) operated by the company. Besides depending on the service plan, access to services provided by the other SNS companies such as Twitter and Facebook are not counted as traffic volume. Although a similar service already exists, this newly offered service is gaining substantial attention because it is provided by the LINE Corporation directly. Signing up for LINE mobile is difficult than other MVNO companies. The users wish to use the data communication service must first verify themselves.