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• + Preface
• + Chapter1 Resource Management and Registry
  • Difference between management of IP addresses and domain names
  • Operation of IP address registry
  • Value of domain name as character string
  • Operation of domain name registry
  • Role of registry
• + Chapter2 Resource management before JNIC and JPNIC
  • How domain name management started
  • Start of IP address management
  • From JNIC to JPNIC
  • Column: Network groups involved in establishment of JNIC/JPNIC
• + Chapter3 Restructuring toward fully-fledged resource management by JPNIC
  • Center of the Internet community
  • Dispatching information as a Network Information Center
  • Column: Logo of JPNIC
  • Consideration to fee and membership structure of JPNIC
  • Relocation of the office along with the expansion of service
  • Incorporation of JPNIC
• + Chapter4 Transition of resource management policy for domain names
  • Coping with expansion of the Internet through policy development
  • Deployment of Geographic Type JP and its reconstruction into Prefecture Type JP
  • Introduction of ED.JP for elementary and secondary education institutions
  • Separation of NE.JP and GR.JP from OR.JP
  • Establishment of JP domain name registration rule
• + Chapter5 IP address policy in the fully-fledged Internet age
  • IP address management before the commercial Internet
  • Column: Routing
  • Two concerns regarding the commercial Internet
  • IPv6 as next-generation Internet protocol
  • Coming of CIDR age
  • Column: IP address notation based on CIDR
  • Economical use of IPv4 addresses with classless technology
• + Chapter6 Building the global IP address management structure
  • Departure from overconcentration at The NIC
  • APNIC Pilot Project
  • Establishment of three RIR framework
  • RIR-NIR-LIR framework
  • Column: Assignment Window
  • Transition of IP address policy development framework
  • Effort to establish global framework
• + Chapter7 Framework for global domain name management led by ICANN
  • Finding a domain name management framework for new era
  • Column: Green Paper and White Paper
  • Decision-making process and organizational structure adopted in ICANN
  • Involvement from Japan
  • ICANN's gTLD policy reforms
  • Column: Registry-registrar model and JP Registrar model ? “thick” registry and “thin” registry
  • New gTLDs
  • Relationship between IP address and ICANN
  • Epicenter of Internet governance
• + Chapter8 General-use JP Domain Name and establishment of JPRS
  • Limitations imposed by the organization’s form as an incorporated association
  • JP-DRP
  • General-use JP Domain Name
  • Establishment of JPRS
  • Starting General-Use JP Domain Name Service
  • Towards transfer of management and administration of JP domain name
• + Chapter9 “Publication” and “disclosure” of registration information
  • Registry mechanism to register and publish registration data
  • Spread of the Internet and registration information
  • Discussion on the handling of registration information
  • Organization/group information
  • Responding to Personal Information Protection Act
  • Reference: Documents on handling registration information
• + Chapter10 IPv4 address pool exhaustion and IPv6
  • IPv6 emerging on the Internet
  • Efforts of Japan towards IPv6 promotion
  • Expansion of the Internet through IPv4
  • Accelerated IPv4 address consumption through penetration of continuous connections
  • IPv4 address pool exhaustion becomes more of a reality
  • IPv4 address pool exhaustion and IPv6 educational activity
  • IPv4 address policy in the face of exhaustion
  • Internet over IPv6 after IPv4 exhaustion
• + Appendix1: IP address and domain name
• + Appendix2: Transition of Internet resource management
• + About History Compilation Team
• + Revision history

Many of the important protocols that form the basis of the Internet, including TCP/IP^[15] and DNS were developed in ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet, and first became operational in the 1980s. The specifications of these protocols were published as Requests for Comments (RFCs) and made open and free for use by anyone. This led to their adoption in networks other than ARPANET and for interconnection among networks^[16].

As a result, it became imperative to smoothly manage and operate the common resources, including domain names and IP addresses, based on these protocols^[17]. In this section, we look back at the status of resource management in Japan in the period from the 1980s to the beginning of 1990s, and explain the circumstances between the launch of JNIC in December 1991^[18] and the formal establishment of JPNIC in April 1993^[19].

How domain name management started

In the beginning, names were managed by each network

The names (more accurately, host names) specifying each connected device were managed independently by each respective network from the 1970s to the 1980s. Each network also operated a management organization called a Network Information Center (NIC), for example SRI-NIC^[20] in ARPANET and BITNIC^[21] in BITNET (one of the wide area networks that existed from the 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s), and each NIC managed a master ledger (host table) individually. This system ensured the uniqueness of all names within each network.

Development of DNS and the beginning of domain names

As described in Chapter 1, the DNS was developed in 1983 and ARPANET’s name management practice shifted from a simple list of host names to the hierarchical management of domain names^[22]. After that, the use of TCP/IP also became prevalent in networks other than ARPANET. And when the email system^[24] using the DNS MX record^[23] became popular, domain names and DNS-based management also began to be used in networks other than ARPANET^[25].

In the United States, seven top level domains (TLDs) － .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net, .org and .arpa (originally used as the transitional domain for ARPANET hosts) － were deployed^{[26] [27]}, and uniform name management across networks started.

.jp becomes the TLD for Japan

When ARPANET introduced domain names, it anticipated that countries other than the United States would be connected. RFC 920, issued in 1984, clearly states that a top-level domain for a country is an “English two letter code (alpha-2) identifying a country according to the ISO Standard for 'Codes for the Representation of Names of Countries'"^[26].

In addition to alpha-2, the ISO standard ISO3166-1 specifies alpha-3 (three letters) and numeric (3 digit numeric figures) country codes. However, since some three-letter TLDs were already in use for the U.S. TLDs (as described above), it was decided to use alpha-2, two-letter identifiers for countries.

One reason for selecting ISO 3166-1 as the basis for the country codes was to avoid the risk that a registry would be drawn into international disputes over the definition of a country or the appropriateness of a TLD string. This concept still lives on today in the policy of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)^[28], which has noted that “IANA is not in the business of deciding what is and what is not a country. Instead, we employ a neutral standard maintained by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency.”^[29]

So, following this practice, .jp was designated as the TLD indicating Japan.

Name management in Japan

In the Japanese network of the 1980s, basically the same form of name management was conducted as in the U.S. For instance, BITNETJP coordinated the management of node names^[30] with BITNET in the U.S., and HEPnet-J did the same with respect to the HEPnet (a wide area network constructed to promote research in high-energy physics)in the U.S.

Similarly, a group called junet-admin^[31] at that time voluntarily took charge of name management within JUNET^[32], itself a volunteer-based experimental network.

Hierarchical name management in JUNET

A significant feature of name management in Japan was that hierarchical name management using domain names was realized before deployment of DNS, even though UUCP^[33] not TCP/IP was used as the base in JUNET at that time. Thanks to mailconf^[34] developed in 1985, email addresses with a domain name such as jun@cc.titech.junet^[35][36] were already usable then.

Therefore, what junet-admin did at the time was simply to manage the uniqueness of the second level domain names (titech in this case), which meant that organizations and domain names were managed on a one-to-one basis in JUNET. This later resulted in a smooth shift from “<organization name>.junet” to “<organization name>.<xx>.jp”.

Delegation of .jp to Jun Murai and introduction of organizational type domains

When TCP/IP started to be used in the 1980s, Jon Postel of the University of South California, Information Sciences Institute (ISI) managed in a centralized manner the numbers, such as IP addresses, and names to be assigned commonly among networks^[37].

Management of .jp was delegated to Jun Murai by Postel in 1986^[38]. Then in 1988, the delegation to Murai and the shift to .jp was endorsed^[39] by the major academic networks of Japan at that time (BITNETJP, HEPnet-J, JUNET). In addition, five attributes, AC, AD, CO, GO and OR, according to the type of organization, were introduced in the JP domain^[40].

As a background to the deployment of the organizational types, there was a rule called the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The AUP created certain usage restrictions, prohibiting use for reasons other than research or research support in each academic network that constituted the Internet at that time^[41]. Therefore, it was necessary to ensure fine control on access to certain networks, including the communication path based on the organizational types of the sender and the receiver. The network operators attempted to use domain name attributes for this particular control^[42].

After JUNET shifted to .jp in 1989^[43], regular operation of JP domain names started.

Establishment of JNIC and handover of name management

Full-scale operation of JP domain names started in this way, but as yet there was no organization dedicated to registering and managing JP domain names. Consequently, junet-admin, which was already managing organizations and domain names on a one-to-one basis, temporarily took charge of the assignment task of JP domain names^[44].

After that, it became a common perception shared among networks that there needed to be an organization which each network in Japan could commonly use and which did not belong to any particular network with a view to managing JP domain names in a fair manner^[45]. As a result of consultations at the Japan Committee for Research Networks (JCRN), formed by representatives of networks and academic societies at that time^[46], a series of coordinated activities was carried out on resource management methods in the Japanese network. Finally the Japan Network Information Center (JNIC) was established as the NIC for Japan in December 1991^[18].

At the time of its launch, JNIC took over management of JP domain names from junet-admin, which had held temporary charge of the management until then^[46].

Start of DNS operation and its handover

Operation of the authoritative DNS server for the management of JP domain names, which led to the present JP DNS server, also started in 1989^[47]. At the beginning of operations, a group called “bind-admin” formed by DNS administrators of the WIDE Project, TISN and JAIN took a leadership role in the management. After JNIC was established, JNIC took over the management^[48].

Start of IP address management

Direct assignment by Postel

As described previously, Jon Postel uniformly managed the numbers that had to be assigned commonly among networks, including IP addresses when TCP/IP came into use in the 1980s. The result of assignments made by Postel was compiled into a document by The NIC (an organization responsible for assigning IP addresses and domain names on the Internet at that time), and the document was made available through RFCs and the WHOIS service operated by The NIC^[37].

In Japan, IP addresses^[49] assigned to Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) in 1986 and IP addresses^[50] assigned to the University of Tokyo in 1987 were distributed directly by Postel. Those addresses were assigned to the person in charge within each organization.

Start of bulk assignment experiment

From the beginning, Postel, Murai and Daniel Karrenberg – who participated in starting the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC)^[52] － which later became the RIR for the European region^[51] － were keenly aware of the need to divide labor by establishing country- and region-specific NICs, taking into account the potential increase in workload in the future and need to support the languages unique to each region^[44].

Murai decided to promote a far-sighted experiment in bulk assignment of IP addresses (assignment in bulk for each country or region) following consultation with Postel and Karrenberg.

As a result, Murai received an assignment of IP address blocks “for Japan:” one Class A address, 254 Class B addresses, and 512 Class C addresses from Postel in 1989^[53]. Murai organized a system where The Network Address Coordination Committee (Coordination Committee), with Eichi Wada (then the professor of the University of Tokyo) as the chair, managed these IP address blocks and facilitated IP address assignment in Japan^[54].

From Network Address Coordination Committee to JNIC

Though IP address assignment was the job of the Coordination Committee, it was a manual and voluntary task carried out by busy university teachers, and delays in IP address assignment (due to the rapid increase in the workload) became a problem.

To solve this problem, it was decided that JNIC would take over IP address assignment work from the Coordination Committee. The handover was completed in June 1992^[45]. As described previously, JNIC had already taken over the registration operation of JP domain names from junet-admin. Therefore, JNIC as the NIC for Japan started to take charge of both IP address assignment and JP domain name registration in Japan then.

With regard to reverse DNS, a reverse DNS zone for IP addresses managed by JPNIC was delegated by InterNIC in 1993 after JPNIC was established^[55].

From JNIC to JPNIC

JNIC ensured fairness of operation through a system where members selected from each network in Japan took charge of its operation^[45]. This concept of management framework was subsequently taken up by JPNIC.

JNIC did not have a definite financial base at that time, and it was operated as a subsidiary organization of JCRN, a federation of academic networks. However, establishment of a financial base to secure staff, networks and servers for the management operation became imperative, and at the same time it became necessary to construct a framework taking into account handling of non-academic networks, as commercial networks were soon to emerge ^[56].

As a result of deliberations among networks on a new organizational framework, it was concluded that a new organization should be established, with participating networks as members, to take on and step up the operations^{[57] [58]}. Consequently “Japan Network Information Center” was formally reorganized as voluntary organization in April 1993^{[19] [57]}. At that time, the name of the organization was changed from the former JNIC to JPNIC, reflecting the two-letter country code for Japan and taking into account the potential formation of NICs in other countries starting with “J”^[57][58][59].