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The Internet Timeline

Last Modified on 18th March 2022

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The Internet Timeline
Event (Oversea) JPNIC/Resource Management in Japan Event (Japan)
1958
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1958 Feb
ARPA was established.

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.

 
1967
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1967
Birth of ARPANET plan

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.

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1968
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1968
IMP (Interface Message Processor) was released.

Interface Message Processor (IMP) was developed in ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), as a device dedicated to the management of packets between connected computers. IMP is now considered as the predecessor of the router.

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1969
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1969
UNIX was development by Bell Laboratories of AT&T.

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.

 
1969 Oct
ARPANET started (4 nodes).

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).

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1970
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1970 Dec
NCP (Network Control Program) was completed.

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.

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1972
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1972
Concept of ”open network” was proposed.

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.

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1972
ARPA was renamed to DARPA.

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).

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1972
SRI started InterNIC project.

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).

 
1972 Mar 26
RFC for the IANA function was issued.

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).

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1972 Oct 24
International Network Working Group (INWG) was established.

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.

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1972 Oct
ARPANET was demonstrated.

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).

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1972
ARPANET was expanded to the region of the NATO area. (United Kingdom and Norway)

ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) which had been operated exclusively in the U.S. was, for the first time, connected internationally. The connection was established between nodes of two NATO member states, namely U.K. and Norway.

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1973
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1973 Sep
First document that addressed TCP/IP was published.

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.

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1974
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1974
Service of TELENET, Public packet switched network was started.
1974 Oct
N-1 network operation started in Japan.

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.

 
1976
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1976
Diffie-Hellman key exchange theory was invented.

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.

 
1977
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1977
RSA encryption scheme was announced.

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.

 
1977
U.S. government adopted DES as a standard encryption.

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.

 
1979
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1979
Birth of UUCPNET

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.

 
1980
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1980
Usenet was developed.

image An internet news distribution tool called ”Usenet” was developed as a system where the general public on the network could make discussions and exchange views in their areas of interest. The computers participating in the Usenet were connected via a protocol called UUCP (Unix to Unix Copy Protocol), and messages were delivered from one to another in a so-called bucket-brigade style.

 
1980
Ethernet standard was published.

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).

 
1981
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1981
CSNET (Computer Science Research Network) operation started.

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.

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1981 Jul
BITNET operation started.

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.

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1981 Oct
Official operation of N-1 network started.

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.

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1982
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1982
Eunet (European UNIX network) operation started in Europe.

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

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1982 Aug
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) was published as RFC.

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

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1983
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1983
Military department (MILNET) was separated from ARPANET.

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.

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1983 Jan 1
TCP/IP was adopted as a standard protocol in the ARPANET.

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.

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1983 Jan 1
Birth of IPv4 address

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.

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1983 Jun 23
Birth of the DNS (Domain Name System)

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.

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1983 Sep
Version 4.2 BSD was released.

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.

 
1984
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1984
Operation of HEPNET-J started.

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.

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1984 May
Birth of BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain)

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.

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1984 Oct
Operation of JUNET started.

image A computer network called ”JUNET(Japan/Japanese University Network),” consisting of mainly Japanese academic institutions, was established in October 1984 as a pilot network among the University of Tokyo, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Keio University. JUNET grew up to be a network eventually connecting approximately 700 institutions.
In JUNET, ”.junet” was used as a top-level domain for domain name assignment. The domain was then shifted to ”.jp” in 1989, and the administration and management of domain names was taken over by JNIC (predecessor of JPNIC) in 1991. In 1988, ”Widely Integrated & Distributed Environment (WIDE)” project, which was a wide area network participated by research institutions and others all over Japan was launched, led by members of JUNET. Accordingly, JUNET completed its role as a pilot network and was dissolved in October 1994.

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1985
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1985
The first computer virus ”Brian” appeared

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

 
1985 Jan
Usenet was connected to JUNET.

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.

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1985 Mar 15
First .COM domain name (symbolics.com) was registered.

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

 
1985 Apr 1
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) was denationalized.

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.

 
1985 Apr
Operation of BITNETJP started.

image Tokyo University of Science was successfully connected to City University of New York (CUNY). The achievement realized the first participation in the BITNET (Because It's Time Network) network by a Japanese university.

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1985 Jul 24
.UK domain name management was delegated to the United Kingdom from IANA.

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

 
1986
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1986
NSF started to rebuild CSNET to NSFNET as backbone network in the United States.

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.

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1986
DEC developed the first firewall.

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

 
1986 Jan 16-17
IETF's first Meeting was held in San Diego, California, USA.

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

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1986 Jan
First overseas connection started between CSNET and JUNET(University of Tokyo).

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

 
1986 Aug 5
.JP domain name management was delegated to Japan from IANA.

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

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1986 Nov 5
.DE domain name management was delegated to Germany from IANA.

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

 
1987
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1987 Jan
NACSIS (Science Information Network) operation started.

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.

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1987 May
InetClub was established.

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.

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1987 Oct
Operation of international e-mail service of the University of Tokyo (CSNET) officially started.

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).

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1988
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1988
Operation of JAIN (Japan Academic Inter-university Network) started.

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.

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1988
WIDE Project (Widely Integrated Distributed Environment project) was launched.

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.

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1988 Apr 19
NTT started the world's first commercial ISDN service.

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.

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1988 Aug 2
IP packet from NTT crossed Pacific Ocean for the first time.

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.

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1988 Nov 2
Morris worm was released and spread widely.

”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.

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1988 Nov
CERT/CC was established.

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).

 
1989
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1989
World's first commercial Internet Provider was established.

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

 
1989
Operation of DNS started.

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

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1989 Feb
”Network Address Coordination Committee” started the assignment of IP addresses.

”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.

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1989 Mar
Concept of HTML was proposed for the first time.

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

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1989 Apr
.JUNET domain name was migrated to .JP.

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.”

 
1989 Jul
RFC for BGP(Border Gateway Protocol) was released.

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.

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1989 Aug
Operation of TISN (Todai International Science Network) started.

image Todai International Science Network (TISN) was launched, aiming to establish a network connection, which could help studies in science and technology, provided by nationally-funded research institutions, corporations, local communities, government-affiliated corporations, etc.,

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1989 Nov
Japan's first computer virus appeared.

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

 
1990
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1990
Search engine ”archie” was developed.

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.

 
1990
FIRST was established.

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.

 
1990 Feb 28
ARPANET was closed.

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).

 
1990 Jun 22
”Bind-admin” (DNS management group) was formed.

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.”

 
1990 Jun 22
First ”IP Meeting” was held.

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.

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1990 Oct
Japan Committee for Research Networks (JCRN) was established.

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.

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1991
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1991
Development of Gopher started.

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.

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1991
JEPG/IP(Japanese Engineering & Planning Group/IP) was established.

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.

 
1991 Mar
Connection between WIDE and BITNET started.

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

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1991 Jun
INET'91 was held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

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.

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1991 Jun
Encryption software PGP was released.

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

 
1991 Aug 6
World's first Web site was launched by CERN.

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.

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1991 Dec 1
JNIC was established. JP domain name registration and management service was transferred to JNIC from junet-admin.

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”.

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1991 Dec 1
”Concerning Registration of JP Domain Names” stipulating registration rules was released.

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.

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1992
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1992
Some volunteers of JEPG/IP started support activities against reported computer security incidents.

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”.

 
1992 Jan
Internet Society (ISOC) was established.

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.

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1992 Feb
Inside NTT, pages using HTML were created and utilized.

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.

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1992 Apr
RIPE NCC was established.

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.

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1992 Jun
Discussions towards establishment of APNIC started.

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.

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1992 Jun 8
IP address assignment and management services were transferred to JNIC from Address Coordination Committee.

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.

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1992 Jun 15-18
INET'92 was held in Kobe.

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.

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1992 Sep 1
WIDE, PC-VAN and NIFTY-Serve started the interconnection experiment.

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

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1992 Sep 30
Japan's first Web site was launched by KEK.

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).

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1992 Oct
Necessity of Regional Internet Registry was pointed out by IETF.

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.

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1992 Oct 18
”JUNET Society” was established.

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.

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1992 Nov
AT&T Jens started a commercial ISP services.

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).

 
1992 Dec
Internet Initiative Japan Inc. (IIJ) started to provide commercial ISP services.

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.

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1992 Dec
”Tokyo Regional Academic InterNetworking” (TRAIN) officially started its operation.

image Tokyo Regional Academic Inter-Network (TRAIN), which was one of regional networks, provided Internet access to academic institutions such as universities in the Kanto region including Tokyo.

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1993
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1993
NCSA released Mosaic.

”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).

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1993
InterNIC project was started by NSF.

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.

 
1993
Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications allowed commercial use of the Internet.

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.

 
1993 Jan
Researches and experiments aimed at foundation of APNIC were proposed.

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).

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1993 Apr 1
Started collecting dues from ISP members for stable operation of .JP domain name management.

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.

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1993 Apr 9
JNIC was reorganized as JPNIC, membership organization composed of network projects.

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.

 
1993 May 29
First Steering Committee meeting was held.

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.

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1993 Jun
RFC1466(ISO-2022-JP) was issued.

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.

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1993 Jul
HTML Version 1.0 was published.

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

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1993 Sep
RFC for CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) was published.

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.

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1993 Sep 1
APNIC pilot project was launched.

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.

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1993 Oct
Rimnet Corporation started to provide commercial ISP services.
1993 Nov 1
Pilot project for IP address agent services by JPNIC member ISPs began.

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.

 
1993 Nov
IIJ launched Internet connection service.

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

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1993 Dec 1
JPNIC delegated by InterNIC to manage reverse DNS name server for JPNIC-assigned address blocks.

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.

 
1993 Dec 1
Experimental project for geographic type domain name (example: EXAMPLE.SHINJUKU.TOKYO.JP) started.

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.

 
1993 Dec
NTT started the ”What's New in Japan” service which became a pioneer of japanese portal site.

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.

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1994
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1994 Feb
Birth of Yahoo!
1994 Feb
NIFTY-Serve started Internet connection 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.

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1994 Mar
NSPIXP was installed.

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.

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1994 Apr 20
WebCrawler went on line.

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.

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1994 Apr 15
First issue of ”JPNIC Newsletter” was published.

image The first edition of JPNIC Newsletter was published as a public relations magazine of JPNIC in April 1994.

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1994 Jun
Internet connection service was initiated by ASAHI Net.
 
1994 Jun
Dial-up IP connection service was initiated by IIJ.
1994 Jun
Global Online Japan (GOL) started Internet connection service.
1994 Jun
Fujitsu ”InfoWeb” started.
1994 Jun
”100 School Project” was started by Ministry of Education and Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

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.

 
1994 Jul
Amazon.com started its business.

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.

 
1994 Jul 20
JPNIC Web information service started.

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

 
1994 Aug 6
Prime minister of Japan and his cabinet opened a website.
1994 Sep
First issue of ”Internet Magazine”.

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.

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1994 Sep
Flat rate dial-up IP connection service was started by Bekkoame Internet.
1994 Oct
W3C was established.

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

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1994 Oct
US White House opened its website.
1994 Oct
”Mado-no-Mori” (Online Software download service) was launched.

”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.

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1994 Oct
JUNET Society was dissolved.

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.

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1994 Nov
”Searcher in Waseda” service started.

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.

 
1994 Dec
Netscape Navigator was released.

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.

 
1995
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1995 Jan
First APNIC meeting was held in Bangkok, Thailand.

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.

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1995 Jan
At the Kobe earthquake, the Internet was utilized to confirm safety of sufferers, etc.
1995 Feb 1
”mesh” Internet connection service was started by NEC.
 
1995 Apr
”TokyoNet Internet Service” was started.

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).

 
1995 May
Advent of Java

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.

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1995 Jun 1
Application fees for JP domain names were introduced.

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.

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1995 Jun
”Server List of Japan (Yahho)” service started.

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.

 
1995 Jul
Amazon.com service started.
1995 Jul 1
Business delegation membership system for agent ISPs and billing system on IP address assignment via the agents were introduced.

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.

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1995 Jul 1
PHS services were started.

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

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1995 Jul 7
”Computer Virus Prevention Guidelines” was noticed by METI.

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.

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1995 Aug 24
U.S. Microsoft Corporation released ”Windows 95” and ”Internet Explorer 1.0.”

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.

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1995 Aug
Internet Explorer was released.

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.

 
1995 Aug
Cnn.com was started by CNN in U.S.
1995 Aug 29
”Information System Safety Standards” was enacted by METI.

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.

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1995 Aug
NETPLAZA service started.

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.

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1995 Aug
NTT started ”Tere-hodai” service.

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.

 
1995 Aug
”Asahi.com” was started by Asahi Shimbun.

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

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1995 Sep 14
InterNIC began charging for registration of .com/.net/.org.

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.

 
1995 Sep
AuctionWeb (predecessor of eBay) was established.
1995 Sep
NSFNET project was closed.

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.

 
1995 Sep 1
Pilot project for sub-allocation (IP address assignments smaller than Class C) began.

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.

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1995 Sep
InfoNavigator service started.

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

 
1995 Nov 23
Japanese version Windows 95 was released.

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.

 
1995 Nov
”Searcher in Waseda” was renamed to ”Senrigan (Clairvoyance).”

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.

 
1995 Nov
Sanyo software started ”SANNET” Internet connection service.
 
1995 Dec
Specifications of IPv6 were determined.

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.

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1995 Dec 1
JNIC office was moved to Kanda-Surugadai (Mansui Bldg.).

image Since the foundation of its predecessor, JPNIC rented its office space in a room of the computer center of the University of Tokyo in Hongo. In view of the increased number of staffs to cover an expanded amount of work, JPNIC decided to rent its own office to Mansui Building in Kanda-Surugadai, Tokyo. When it was called a computer center, what it needed was only a small space which could accommodate a few computers and desks plus a table for a visitor. However, the new office had a workplace sufficient for about 10 staff people and a conference room. The new office was considerably large compared to the previous one.

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1995 Dec
”NTT DIRECTORY” opening

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”.

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1995 Dec
Internet connection service”So-net” was launched by Sony.
 
1996
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1996
IPv6 experimental network ”6bone” was built.

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.

 
1996 Jan 1
Internet World Exposition 1996 was held.

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

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1996 Apr 1
Full-scale operation for geographic type domain names began.

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.

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1996 Apr
Yahoo! Japan was launched.

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

 
1996 Jul 4
Web-based free e-mail service ”Hotmail” was released.

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.

 
1996 Jul
KrCERT/CC was established.

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

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1996 Jul 31
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 10,000.

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.

 
1996 Jul 12
NEC launched ”BIGLOBE”.

”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.

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1996 Aug 8
”Unauthorized Computer Access Prevention Guidelines” was enacted by METI.

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.

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1996 Oct 22
IAHC was established.

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.

 
1996 Oct
”Computer Emergency Response Center” was set up in the Japan Information Processing Development Corporation (JIPDEC).

”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.

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1996 Oct
NSPIXP-2 was installed.

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.

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1996 Oct
”Public network - private line - public network” connection was liberalized in domestic calls.

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.

 
1996 Nov
First version of ICQ was published.

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

 
1996 Nov
RFC2050 “Internet Registry IP Allocation Guidelines” was issued.

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.

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1996 Nov 5
Registration of OR.JP domain name was released after temporary suspension.

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.

 
1996 Nov 6
NE.JP domain name was introduced for network service providers.

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.

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1996 Dec 10
”Third level uniqueness rule” for JP domain names was abolished.

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.

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1996 Dec 10
Assignment of domain names that start with a number began.

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.

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1996 Dec 25
Internet connection service ”OCN” was started by NTT.
 
1997
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1997
APIA (Asia & Pacific Internet Association) was established.

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.

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1997 Feb 28
Plan document to establish new TLDs called ”gTLD-MoU” was published.

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.

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1997 Feb 13
JANOG mailing list was set up.

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

 
1997 Feb
”Infoseek Japan” service was launched.

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

 
1997 Mar 31
JPNIC received official government recognition as incorporated non-profit organization.

image JPNIC established in April 1993 continued its operation as an unincorporated association for the first four years without juridical personality. With the efforts and support by its members and related parties, JPNIC was stably growing. However, its status of unincorporated organization caused some accounting problems in relation to fees paid by members and disadvantages in negotiating with banks and tax offices. To resolve the problems and achieve higher recognition in what JPNIC was, it was reorganized as an incorporated association. accounting problems in relation to fees paid by members and disadvantages in negotiating with banks and tax offices. To resolve the problems and achieve higher recognition in what JPNIC was, it was reorganized as an incorporated organization.

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1997 Mar
Goo service was started by NTT.

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.

 
1997 Apr 1
Start of the data communication services provided by PIAFS.

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

 
1997 Apr
”ODN” service was launched.
 
1997 May 22
Amendments of Law Concerning Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Etc. (NTTLaw) and the International Telegraph and Telephone Act (KDD Law) were adopted by the House of Representatives.
1997 Jun 3
APAN (Asia-Pacific Advanced Network) was established.

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.

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1997 Jul
”AlterNIC” hijacked InterNIC's websites.

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).

 
1997 Jul 25
JANOG (Japan Network Operators' Group) was formed.

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

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1997 Jul
”DION” service was launched.
 
1997 Aug
6bone started operating under the IPv6 Testing Address Allocation.

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.

 
1997 Aug 7
AS number assignment services were transferred to JPNIC from JEPG/IP and assignment by JPNIC was started.

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.

 
1997 Aug 23
M root server operation started in Japan.

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.

 
1997 Aug
International Internet phone service was liberalized to type II carriers.

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.)

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1997 Sep 15
Google Search emerged in the Internet world.

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.

 
1997 Sep 24
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game ”Ultima Online” was released.

”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.

 
1997 Oct
NSPIXP-3 was installed.

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.

 
1997 Nov 7
Symposium entitled ”New Development of the Internet Domain Name System” was held in Tokyo.

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.

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1997 Dec
IP address management service was transferred to ARIN from InterNIC.

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).

 
1997 Dec 1
GR domain was introduced for non-corporate entities.

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.

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1997 Dec 16
First ”Internet Week” was held in Yokohama.

image The first Internet Week was held. The event was an extended and advanced successor of the IP Meetings, which had been hosted by Japanese Engineering & Planning Group/IP (JEPG/IP) from the first meeting and served as a place for people involved in operation of the Internet in Japan to get together, share information, and make discussions for the future. The Internet Week was enhanced by additional tutorials and conferences.

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1997 Dec 22
”Public network - private line - public network” connection was liberalized for international services.
 
1997 Dec
”Excite Japan” was launched.

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

 
1998
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1998 Jan
U.S. government published Green Paper.

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.

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1998 Feb 9
JPNIC office was moved to Kanda-Ogawamachi (Fuundo Bldg.).

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.

 
1998 Mar 1
”Rules for JP domain name registration” took effect.

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.”

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1998 Apr
KAME Project was launched.

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.

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1998 May
Alta Vista started to support Japanese.

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.

 
1998 Jun
U.S. government published a White Paper.

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.

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1998 Jul 30
International Telegraph and Telephone Act (KDD Law) as abolished.

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.

 
1998 Aug
JPCERT/CC became a member of the FIRST.

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.

 
1998 Sep
Google Inc. was founded.

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.

 
1998 Sep
TWCERT/CC was established.

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

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1998 Oct
ICANN was established.

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.

 
1998 Oct
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 50,000.

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.

 
1998 Oct
Lycos Japan was launched.

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

 
1998 Nov 25
U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (ICANN/DoC MoU).

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.

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1999
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1999 Feb 1
ED domain name was introduced for educational institutions.

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).

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1999 Feb 22
NTT DoCoMo released ”i-mode” service.

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.

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1999 Mar
Melissa virus spread around the world.

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.

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1999 Apr 30
JPNIC began to work in earnest on the Internationalized Domain Name project.

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.”

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1999 May 21
Leakage of Uji-shi resident registry database in Kyoto.

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.

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1999 May
File-sharing service ”Napstar” was put in service.

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.

 
1999 May 26
JPNIC formally announced its positive commitment toward IPv6.

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.

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1999 May
BBS ”2channel” was opened.
1999 Jul 14
IANA allocated IPv6 addresses to RIRs for the first time.

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.

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1999 Jul 1
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation(NTT) was devided and reorganized.

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.

 
1999 Aug 13
APNIC's first allocation of IPv6 addresses to WIDE project was completed.

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

 
1999 Sep
CNCERT/CC was established.

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.

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1999 Sep 28
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 100,000.

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.

 
1999 Oct 24
Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) was enforced.

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).

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1999 Nov 4
NSI and ICANN entered into registry agreement.

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.

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1999 Dec 15
PKI Forum was established.

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.

 
1999 Dec 14-18
JPNIC hosted ”Third Internet Week.”

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”.

 
2000
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2000 Jan 24
Web manipulation and falsification of Japanese ministries occured successively.

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.

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2000 Jan 20
Agent Services for IPv6 Sub-TLA applications to APNIC began.

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.

 
2000 Jan 29
IP address-related documents were fully revised.

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.

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2000 Feb 18
U.S. Microsot released “Windows 2000”

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.

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2000 Feb
Various resource management functions of the IANA were transferred to ICANN.

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.

 
2000 Feb 13
Act on Prohibition of Unauthorized Computer Access was enacted.

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.

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2000 May
”I LOVE YOU” virus spreaded.

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.

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2000 Jul 13
JPNIC hosted ICANN Yokohama Meeting.

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.

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2000 Jul 13
Distribution of beta version of Multilingualized Domain Name evaluation kit (mDNkit) began.

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).

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2000 Jul 18
INET2000 was held in Yokohama supported by JPNIC as its main sponsor.

image ISOC (Internet Society) is a non-profit organization designed for standardization of the Internet technologies and systems, educations, and solutions and discussions on policy-related challenges and issues, and hosts an ”International Network Conference (INET) event every year. The ISOC's conference ”INET2000” was held in Japan supported by JPNIC as its major sponsor, at Pacifico Yokohama convention center following the ICANN Meeting.

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2000 Jul
Flat-rate ISDN communication service was launched by NTT East and NTT West.
2000 Jul
Tokyo Metallic Communications Corp. was established.

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

 
2000 Aug 22
JPNIC entered into agreement with the Industrial Property Arbitration Center (present Japan Intellectual Property Arbitration Center) for its service as JP domain name dispute resolution service provider.

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.

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2000 Sep
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 200,000.

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.

 
2000 Sep
Distribution of prerelease version of Multilingualized Domain Name evaluation kit (mDNkit) began.

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.

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2000 Sep 21
Japanese government announced the ”e-Japan strategy”.

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.

 
2000 Sep
Google's search engine service was started in Japanese.

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.

 
2000 Sep
IIJ started IPv6 service.

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

 
2000 Oct 18
Distribution of formal version of Multilingualized Domain Name evaluation kit (mDNkit) began.

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.

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2000 Oct 19
”JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy” took effect.

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.

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2000 Oct 19
Transfer of JP domain names was liberalized in principle.

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.

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2000 Oct
KDDI Corporation was established.

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

 
2000 Nov 9
Trial registration of International Domain Names (IDN) started in .com/.net/.org domain names.

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.

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2000 Nov 16
Introduction of 7 gTLDs was approved.

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.

 
2000 Nov 6
Trial operation (Phase 1) of domain names in Japanese started.

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.

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2000 Nov
Internet service provider ”Livedoor” started to provide free Internet access.
2000 Dec 26
Japan Registry Service Co., Ltd. (JPRS) was established.

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.

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2000 Dec 15
National Information Security Promocion Council formulated ”Special Action Plan related to Cyber-Terrorism Measures for Critical Infrastructure”.

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.

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2000 Dec 26
NTT East and West launced full-scale FLET'S ADSL.

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.

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2000 Dec 31
Internet Expo ”Internet Fair 2001 Japan” started as a year event.

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.

 
2001
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2001 Jan 15
”Wikipedia project” was launched.

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.

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2001 Jan 6
Basic Act on the Formation of an Advanced Information and Telecommunications Network Society (IT Basic Law) was enacted.

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.

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2001 Feb 22
JPRS started preliminary registration application period for General-use JP domain names.

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.

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2001 Mar
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 300,000.

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.

 
2001 Mar 1
USEN started FTTH services for endusers.

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.

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2001 Apr 1
IP Address Management Agent system was introduced.

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.

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2001 Apr 1
New membership structure was introduced.

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.

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2001 Apr
JPRS started General-use JP Domain Concurrent Registration Phase.

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.

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2001 Apr 1
Law on permitting to use electronic documents such as e-mail and FAX under certain circumstances was enacted.

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.

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2001 Apr 1
Act on Electronic Signatures and Certification Business was enacted.

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.

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2001 May 7
Trial operation (Phase 2) of domain names in Japanese started.

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.

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2001 May
JPRS launched first-come-first-served basis registration application period for General-use JP domain names.

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.

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2001 Jun
A power company in California was intruded illegaly to their power grid system.

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.

 
2001 Jun
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 400,000.

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

 
2001 Jun 14
First issue of e-mail newsletter from the Koizumi Cabinet

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.

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2001 Jun
NTT East and West announced full-scale provision of B-FLET's service.

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

 
2001 Jul
Code Red worm spreaded.

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.

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2001 Jul 25
First meeting of Policy Advisory Council, successor of Steering Committee, was held.

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.

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2001 Jul
Japanese Domain Name Association (JDNA) was established.

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.

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2001 Aug
WEP attack methods was publicized.

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)”.

 
2001 Aug 29
DDI Pocket started the full flat-rate PHS communication service.

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.

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2001 Sep
Nimda worm spreaded.

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.

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2001 Sep 14
”JPNIC News & Views,” a new e-mail news letter service, was introduced.

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.

 
2001 Sep 25
JPNIC office was moved to Uchi-Kanda (Kokusai-Kougyou-Kanda Bldg.).

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.

 
2001 Sep
”Yahoo! BB” service started.
 
2001 Oct 25
ICANN and auDA signed ccTLD Sponsorship Agreement for the first time.

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).

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2001 Oct 23
First ICANN Reporting Session was held.

image ICANN Reporting Session was held co-hosted by JPNIC and the Internet Association Japan (IAjapan) at Japan Education Center in Hitotubashi, Tokyo. It was the first one of the reporting sessions for japanese audience, which were designed to present the topics and discussions at the meetings of the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) by the meeting participants.

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2001 Oct 1
NTTdocomo started the world's first 3G service “FOMA”

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.

 
2001 Nov 8
”Convention on Cybercrime” was adopted by more than 30 countries including Japan.

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.

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2001 Nov 16
U.S. Microsoft released “Windows XP”

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.

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2001 Nov 9
JPNIC signed Memorandum for the Transfer of Management and Administration of the .JP top-level domain.

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.

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2001 Dec 6
First JPNIC Open Policy Meeting was held.

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.

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2001 Dec 25
The Act on Special Provisions to the Civil Code Concerning Electronic Consumer Contracts and Electronic Acceptance Notice was enacted.

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.

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2002
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2002
National Police Agency started to provide the website ”@Police”.

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.

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2002 Jan
TERENA(The Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association) formulated Incident Object Description and Exchange Format Requirements(IODEF).

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).

 
2002 Jan 31
JPNIC concluded an agreement with JPRS on transfer of management and administration of the .JP top-level domain.

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.

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2002 Jan 28
K-Opticom started FTTH service ”eo Mega fiber for endusers.

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

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2002 Feb 27
JPRS and ICANN entered into ”.JP ccTLD Sponsorship Agreement.”

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.

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2002 Mar 29
JPNIC entered into escrow agreement with JPRS on JP domain name registry data.

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.

 
2002 Mar 29
JPNIC and JPRS entered again into agreement with the Industrial Property Arbitration Center (present Japan Intellectual Property Arbitration Center) to serve as JP domain name dispute resolution service provider.

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.

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2002 Mar 24-26
APSIRC 2002 was held in Tokyo hosted by JPCERT/CC.

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.

 
2002 Mar 29
Tokyo Electric Power Co.,Inc. started FTTH service ”TEPCO Hikari”.

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”.

 
2002 Apr 1
Rules on registration management for AD.JP domain names were changed.

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.

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2002 Apr 1
JP domain name registration and management functions were transferred to JPRS.

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.

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2002 Apr 1
Data escrowing for JP domain name registry was initiated by JPNIC and JPRS.

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.

 
2002 Apr
JPNIC commenced activities relating to Internet security.

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.

 
2002 Apr 1
”CDMA2000 1X” was started by KDDI.

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.

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2002 May
DNS Quality Check Task Force (DNSQC-TF) was established.

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

 
2002 May 27
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 was enacted.

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.

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2002 Jun
RFC3261 for SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) used mainly for IP telephones was issued

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”.




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2002 Jun 3
JPNIC was awarded MPHPT (Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications) Minister's Award for ”Info-Communications Promotion Month 2002.”

image JPNIC was awarded for its longstanding and substantial contributions to broader use and advancement of information communication.

 
2002 Jul 1
New IPv6 Address Allocation and Assignment Policy was implemented.

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.

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2002 Jul 1
Act on Regulation of Transmission of Specified Electronic Mail was enacted.

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.

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2002 Jul 14-19
54th IETF meeting was held in Yokohama.

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.

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2002 Jul
Telecom-ISAC Japan was launched.

”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”.

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2002 Aug 23
JPIRR trial services were launched.

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.

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2002 Sep 3-6
14th APNIC Open Policy Meeting was held in Kitakyushu.

JPNIC contributed to the meeting as a local host.

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2002 Sep 27
Assignment of telephone numbers starting with “050” for IP telephones started

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.

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2002 Oct 21
All the root servers were attacked simultaneously.

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.

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2002 Oct 31
LACNIC was approved by ICANN as the forth RIR (Regional Internet Registory).

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).

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2002 Oct 1
Registration of new second level ”LG.JP” domain names for Japanese local governments was started.

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.

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2002 Oct
International domain names plug-in ”i-Nav” for IE was distributed.

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.

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2002 Dec 25
STRINGPREP was published as RFC3454.

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.

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2002 Dec 6
Distribution of preview version of Internationalized Domain Name tool kit (idnkit) was started.

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.

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2002 Dec 13
”Next Generation Task Force” was created.

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

 
2003
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2003 Jan 1
Management and Administration of .org domain name was transferred to PIR (Public Interest Registry).

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).

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2003 Jan
Slammer worm spreaded.

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.

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2003 Jan
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 500,000.

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.

 
2003 Feb 14
ACE Prefix for internationalized domain name was decided to ”xn.”

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.

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2003 Mar 7
RFCs for IDNA (RFC3490), NAMEPREP (RFC3491), and Punycode (RFC3492) were issued.

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).

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2003 Mar
JPCERT/CC was incorporated.

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)”.

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2003 Mar 19
Distribution of release version of Internationalized Domain Name tool kit (idnkit) began.

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.

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2003 May 12
Members-only pages were added to the JPNIC Web site.

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.

 
2003 May 23
Report from ENUM Study Group, supported by JPNIC as its secretariat, was completed.

image The study group discussed implementation and operation methods for ”Telephone Number Mapping (ENUM)” and issued a report which was compilation of its work. ENUM 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.

 
2003 Jul
MySpace was created.

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.

 
2003 Jul 7
First JPNIC, JPCERT/CC Security Seminar 2003 was held.

image As part of the securities services provided by JPNIC, a seminar focusing on ”What is the incident handling that operators should know” was held at Roppongi Forum in Roppongi Hills bldg., co-hosted by JPCERT/CC (Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center).

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2003 Jul 10
JPRS launched RFC-compliant Japanese JP domain name registration management service.

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.

 
2003 Jul 10
Trial operation (Phase 2) of domain names in Japanese was completed.

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.

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2003 Aug
Blaster worm spreaded.

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.

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2003 Aug
WIDE project and JPRS began distributed operation of ”JP” domain name servers.

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.”

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2003 Sep
US-CERT(United States Computer Emergency Response Team) was established.

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.

 
2003 Sep 17
”ENUM Trial Japan,” was formed, jointly supported by JPNIC and JPRS as its secretariat.

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.

 
2003 Oct 24
Number Resources Organization (NRO) was established.

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).

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2003 Nov
Anti Phising Working Gtoup(APWG) held the first meeting in San Francisco.

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.

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2003 Nov 28
First .JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution seminar was held.

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.

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2003 Dec 10-12
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Geneva meeting was held.

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.

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2003 Dec 13
U.S. VeriSign started registration and management services for RFC-compliant internationalized domain name.

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.

 
2003 Dec
JPCERT/CC publicized Internet Scan Data Acquisition System(ISDAS).

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.

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2004
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2004 Jan 29
”Debriefing Session on Internet Governance Issues at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)” was held.

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.

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2004 Feb 4
Birth of Facebook

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.

 
2004 Feb
Online photo management and sharing application ”Flickr” was released.

A photo hosting service called ”Flickr” was launched.

 
2004 Feb 2
IP Anycast was introduced to JP DNS.

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.

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2004 Feb 19
JPRS started ”Japanese JP Navi” service.

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.

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2004 Feb
SNS ”mixi” service was started.
 
2004 Mar 1
ccNSO was established, and JPRS participated as member.

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.

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2004 Mar 19
9 sponsored gTLDs selected in second round of applications were announced.

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.

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2004 Mar 19
Provider independent address assignment service was launched.

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.

 
2004 Apr 19
RFC for IDN-admin was published as RFC3743.

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.

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2004 Apr 19
Password authentication for IP address management agents commenced.

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.

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2004 May 9
P2P file-sharing software ”Winny” developer was arrested (later judged as not guilty).

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.

 
2004 May 12
First debriefing meeting of ENUM Trial Japan was held.

image ENUM is the mechanism, established in September 2003, 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. A project called ”ENUM Trial Japan” designed to proceed with experiments for basic communication service technology using ENUM held its first reporting session, providing a report on the activities ETJP had been engaged in, a schedule of future activities, and so on, aiming to gain deeper understanding by the public in ENUM technology and ETJP.

 
2004 Jul 20
First AAAA record was added to the root zone.

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.

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2004 Jul 27
P2P telephone, Skype1.0, was announced.
2004 Jul 1
Escrow system for JP domain name registry data was shifted to tripartite system.

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.

 
2004 Jul 7
METI(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry) announced a notice about vulnerability handlings.

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.

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2004 Aug 18
IP address fee structure was revised.

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

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2004 Sep 1
NTT East started telephone service using FTTH

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.

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2004 Oct 7
MIC(Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications) held the first meeting of ”Study Group on handling of junk mails”.

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.

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2004 Nov 9
Firefox1.0 was released.

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.

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2004 Nov 15
New IP registry system was launched.

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.

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2004 Nov 11
Second report of ENUM Trial Japan (ETJP) was published.

”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.

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2004 Dec 1
Policy WG was set to discuss about IP address policy development in Japan.

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.

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2004 Dec 1
”VoIP/SIP Interoperability Task Force” was established. (joint secretariat JPNIC/MRI)

”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.

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2005
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2005 Jan
Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI) was defined as RFC3987, as complement to the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).

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.

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2005 Jan 26
First IGTF Reporting Session was held.

image ”IGTF Reporting Session ” was held by Internet Governance Task Force (IGTF) founded in August in 2004. The session was held in conjunction with the 11th ICANN Reporting Session, and presented the first activity report on participation in the WGIG meeting, and so on.

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2005 Jan
EMOBILE Ltd. was established.

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.

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2005 Feb 15
YouTube was established.

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

 
2005 Feb
The number of registration of General-use JP domain name outnumbered Organizational/Geographic Type JP Domain Name.

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.

 
2005 Feb 18-25
APRICOT 2005 took place in Kyoto.

image JPNIC supported the holding of Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies (APRICOT), which is an annual forum with the purpose of enhancing knowledge and skills required for engineers for the growth of Internet infrastructures in the Pacific region. The APRICOT 2005 held, for the first time in Japan, at Kyoto International Conference Hall in Kyoto celebrated its 10th anniversary.

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2005 Feb
Telecom-ISAC Japan was incorporated under the Japan Data Communications Association.

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.

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2005 Mar 22
Services changed according to WHOIS system separation from JPRS

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.

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2005 Apr
AfriNIC was approved by ICANN as the fifth RIR (Regional Internet Registry).

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).

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2005 Apr 1
Act on Utilization of telecommunications Technology in Document Preservation, etc. Conducted by Private Business Operators, etc. was enacted.

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.

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2005 Apr 1
Personal Information Protection Law was fully enforced.

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.

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2005 Apr 28
Anti-Phishing Council was established

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.

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2005 Apr
JPCERT/CC started early warning service based on traffic monitoring and vulnerability information.

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.

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2005 Apr
Broadband television service ”GyaO” was started by USEN.

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!”.

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2005 May 16
Localized IPv6 address resource service was implemented.

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.

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2005 Jun 17
Shigeki Goto succeeded Jun Murai as president of JPNIC.

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.

 
2005 Jun
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 700,000.
2005 Jun
JPCERT/CC started Internet fixed-point observation visualization project ”TSUBAME”.

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.

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2005 Aug 5
Jun Murai, former president of JPNIC, received Jon Postel Award 2005.

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.

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2005 Sep 13
. SE registry introduced DNSSEC.

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

 
2005 Sep 1
Experimental authentication service using JPNIC resource service CA (certification authority) in IP address services was started.

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.

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2005 Nov 16-18
World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in Tunis.

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.

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2006
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2006 Jan 24
IPv6 allocation fees were partially reduced.

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.

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2006 Jan 25
Japan ENUM Trial using E.164 numbers beginning with Japanese country code 81 was launched.

”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.”

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2006 Jan 28
Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department seized the first phising fraud in Japan.

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.

 
2006 Feb
Russian Stock Exchange was suspended trading by the virus infection.

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.

 
2006 Feb 1
JPNIC started route6 object registration in JPIRR test service.

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.

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2006 Mar
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 800,000.
2006 Mar 31
All BBS(Bulletin Board System) services provided by Nifty were closed.
2006 Apr 3
JPNIC released report on ”Recommendations on preparing for IPv4 address exhaustion.”

image As plural studies had suggested that IPv4 addresses would be exhausted in a few years, JPNIC formed a special expert team working on investigating and studying use of number resources consisting of experts involved in operation of the Internet in Japan, in December 2005. The team set out to review the founding in the studies and predict the future of the IPv4 addresses, and compiled a report of their work. http://www.nic.ad.jp/ja/topics/2006/20060403-01.html

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2006 Apr
JPRS shortened processing time for JP DNS update.

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.

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2006 Apr 8
KAME Porject Activity Report was published.

The KAME project, which was designed to develop IPv6 reference implementation, completed the objective and compiled a report covering its activities in the past 7 years.

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2006 Apr 17-21
Hosted by JPNIC, SIPit18 (18th SIP Interoperability Tests) was held for first time in Japan.

image ”SIPit” standing for ”SIP Interoperabirity Test” is an international event led by SIP Forum (http://www.sipforum.org/) which hosts an event about two times a year and works toward establishing interconnectability between network devices incorporating SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), signaling protocol used in IP phone services. JPNIC participated in the event with National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) as one of the hosts.

 
2006 Apr 27
First IETF Forum-Japan was held. JPNIC supported it in the Executive Committee organization.

image ”IETF Forum-Japan” was founded and its first meeting was held at Kaiun Club in Nagata-cho, Tokyo, and JPNIC joined it as one of the executive committee members. The forum has objectives of enhancing and maintaining international competitiveness of Japan, as well as making discussions that may contribute to the strategies toward the enhancement.

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2006 Jun
Twitter, Inc. was established.

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

 
2006 Aug 1
JPIRR service was officially launched.

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.

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2006 Sep 29
U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN entered into ”Joint Project agreement (JPA).”

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.

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2006 Sep 1
Restriction that only one domain name can be registered by one organization was canceled in the service for .GO.JP domain name.

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.

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2006 Oct 37590
The first IGF meeting was held in Athens, Greece.

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.

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2006 Oct 5
”Information Security Day”was enacted.

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.

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2006 Nov
Number of General-use JP domain name registrations exceeded 500,000.

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.

 
2006 Dec 44689
Internet Week celebrated 10th anniversary.

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.

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2006 Dec 12
Video-sharing site ”Nico Nico Douga” was started as an experimental service.

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.

 
2007
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2007 Jan
The presence of WikiLeaks was unveiled for the first time.

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.

 
2007 Feb 6
All the root servers were attacked simultaneously again.

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.

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2007 Feb 8
Portable assignment for IPv6 was adopted.

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.

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2007 Mar
”Ustream” service was launched.

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

 
2007 Mar 7
4-byte AS number assignment service started.

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.

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2007 Mar 26
IPv6-enabled Web and WHOIS service started.

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

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2007 Mar
”Procedure for recovering deleted domain name registration” for General-use JP domain names was introduced.

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.

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2007 Mar 28
Japan CSIRT Association was established.

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.

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2007 Apr
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 900,000.
2007 Jun 1
Amended ”JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (JP-DRP)” and ”Rules for the JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy” went into effect.

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.

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2007 Jun 15
Formal statement on IPv4 address exhaustion in Internet Registries was issued.

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.

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2007 Sep 29
Issuing electronic certificates for IP address management business was officially started.

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

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2007 Dec 7
Research paper ”Study Report on the IPv4 Address Space Exhaustion Issue (Phase I)” was published.

image The report reaffirmed that exhaustion of an IPv4 address pool would take place around 2010 to 2011 based on the demands estimated using various economic indicators.

It was suggested in the report that three measures against the expected exhaustion of the IPv4 address pool would be:
(1) securing IPv4 addresses anyhow, for example, from among own networks;
(2) accommodating new customers using private IPv4 addresses, and connecting the Internet via NAT (network address translation); and
(3) accommodating new customers using IPv6 addresses.

The report said that the measures (1) and (2) would have a limited impact; therefore, (3) would be the only resolution in light of a long-term growth of the Internet.

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2007 Dec 17
Started a trial on authorizing routing information in JPIRR Service.

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.

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2008
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2008 Feb 4
IPv6 address was added to the 6 root servers.

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.

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2008 Mar
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded a million.

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.

 
2008 Apr 30
JPNIC board of trustees expressed concern about ”Legislation of restriction to youth's Internet use” by several diet members.

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.

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2008 Apr
Japanese version Twitter service was introduced.
2008 May 21
Started experiment on notifying route hijacks.

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.

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2008 Jul 10
Official version of Evernote released

“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.

 
2008 Jul 10
Apple Inc. launched ”App Store”.

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

 
2008 Aug
A new DNS cash poisoning method ”Kaminsky Attack” was revealed by U.S. security researcher Dan Kaminsky.

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.

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2008 Aug 7
JPCERT/CC published a research report on targeting attacks.

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.

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2008 Sep
Dropbox official service launched

“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.

 
2008 Sep 5
”Task Force on IPv4 Address Exhaustion, Japan” was formed.

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).

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2008 Sep 10
”Anti-Phishing Guidelines” was published by Anti-Phishing Council.

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

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2008 Oct
”Android Market” was started.
2008 Dec
”NHK on Demand” by Japan Broadcasting Corporation was commenced.
2009
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2009 Feb
UQ WiMAX service started.
2009 Mar 11
Collection of untapped historical PI (Provider Independent) addresses was completed.

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.

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2009 Mar
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 1.1 million.
2009 May
Gumblar Attack spreaded.

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.

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2009 May 18-22
JPNIC and NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) hosted SIPit24 (24th SIP Interoperability Tests) held for the second time in Japan.

image Hosted by National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) and JPNIC, the international event ”SIPit24 ” was held for establishing interconnectability between network devices incorporating SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), signaling protocol used in IP phone services. It was the second SIPit event took place in Japan, following the SIPit18 in April 2006.

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2009 Jun 19
JPCERT/CC published research tool of targeted email attacks for free.

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.

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2009 Jun 28-Jul 3
Japan's first FIRST Conference was held in Kyoto.

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.

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2009 Sep 30
U.S. Department of Commerce and ICANN concluded ”Affirmation of Commitments (AoC).”

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.

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2009 Sep 25
JPNIC participated in Japan Internet Domain Name Council to introduce a new Internationalized Domain Name Country Code Top Level Domain (IDN ccTLD).

”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.

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2009 Oct 22
U.S. Microsoft released "Windows 7"

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.

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2009 Nov 16
Accepting applications for the IDN ccTLD based on the Fast Track Process was started.

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.

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2009 Nov
Conficker worm was pandemic.

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).

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2009 Nov 44786
76th IETF meeting was held in Hiroshima.

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.

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2010
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2010 Mar 23
Confirmation on holders of historical AS numbers was completed.

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.

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2010 Apr 12
ProPublica became the first net media to win the Pulitzer Prize

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

 
2010 Apr 19
Authentication using JPNIC resource service CA for IP address management agents was officially started.

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.

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2010 May 5
World's first IDN TLD was registered in the root zone.

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.

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2010 Jun 23
JPCERT/CC was certified as Japan's first CVE(Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) Numbering Authority(CNA).

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.

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2010 Jul 15
ICANN published the root zone trust anchor, that means root zone corresponds to the DNSSEC.

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

 
2010 Jul 26
Distribution method of IPv6 address was simplified.

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.

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2010 Sep 26
Cyber attack on Iran's nuclear facilities occurred.

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.

 
2010 Oct 12
Japan Internet Domain Name Council (JIDNC) appointed JPRS to the registry of Japanese IDN ccTLD.

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.

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2010 Dec 10
.Net registry supported user DNSSEC management.

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

 
2010 Dec 24
NTT Docomo started its first LTE service, "Xi"

“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.

 
2011
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2011 Jan 16
JPRS deployed DNSSEC in the JP Domain Name services.

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

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2011 Feb 3
IANA's free pool of IPv4 address space was depleted.

image In the early morning of February 1, 2011 (on January 31, in California where IANA is located), IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) allocated the last two /8 blocks (16.78 million addresses per /8block) to the RIR (Regional Internet Registry) in the Asia Pacific region, namely APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre). This left five unallocated /8 blocks at IANA. On February 3, IANA implanted the policy that ”when the last 5 unallocated /8 blocks are left, each of them should be allocated to the five RIRs in the world, and the allocation should come to an end,” which means that IANA's primary address pool was exhausted.

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2011 Feb
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 1.2 million.
2011 Mar 31
.Com registry supported user DNSSEC management.

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

 
2011 Apr 15
APNIC's IPv4 address pool was exhausted.

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.

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2011 Apr
Large information outflow from the website of major online services game maker.

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.

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2011 Apr 15
Japanese version of Dropbox released

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

 
2011 Apr 18
KDDI started assignment of IPv6 addresses to all their customers at no charge in ”au Hikari” service.

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.

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2011 Jun 8
”World IPv6 Day” was held to test and promote public IPv6 deployment by ISOC.

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.

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2011 Jun
“LINE” service started

“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.

 
2011 Jun 1
NTT East and NTT West started to provide IPv6 PPPoE connection service.

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.

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2011 Jul 21
NTT East and NTT West started to provide IPv6 IPoE connection service.

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.

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2011 Aug 1
IPv4 address transfer request process started.

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.

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2011 Sep
Cyber attacks against several japanese famous defense companies.

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.

 
2011 Oct
Diet both Houses was recieved targeted attacks.

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.

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2011 Nov
Prime minister of Japan and his cabinet opened official account on "Twitter"
2012
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2012 Jan 12
ICANN launched the third application period for new gTLDs.

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.

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2012 Mar 6
Control Systems Security Center(CSSC) was established in accordance with the ”Act on Technology Research Association”.

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”.

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2012 Mar
Malware ”DNS Changer” spreaded in Japan

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.

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2012 Apr 16
Huffington Post became the first blog to win the Pulitzer Prize

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

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2012 Apr 23
ISOC began to announce the ”Internet Hall of Fame”.

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.

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2012 Apr 1
New IP address and AS number fee structure was implemented.

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.

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2012 Jun 6
”World IPv6 Launch” was started in order to enable IPv6 permanently on all participating sites.

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.

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2012 Jun
”Anonymous” declared protests to criminal penalties against illegal downloads.

Some major websites including those of the Ministry of Finance, the Liberal Democratic Party, and the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers were attacked by a group of international hacktivists, with a declaration of their protest against the approval on the bill to impose criminal penalties on illegal downloading in Japan. The group started its activities in 2006 and consisted of users of Internet Relay Chats (IRCs).

 
2012 Jul 16
Application for priority registration on ”Prefecture Type JP Domain Name” started.

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.

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2012 Jul 3
Japan ratified the ”Convention on Cybercrime”.

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.

 
2012 Jul 11
Cyber Attack Analysis Council was established.

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.

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2012 Aug 27
JPNIC office was moved to Uchi-Kanda (Urbannet-Kanda Bldg.).

image JPNIC moved its office to Urbannet-Kanda Bldg. in the same area (Uchi-kanda, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) as the previous office (Kokusai-Kougyou-Kanda Bldg.). The new office is in one-minute walk from the old one.

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2012 Aug
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 1.3 million.
2012 Sep 14
RIPE NCC's IPv4 address pool was exhausted.

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.

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2012 Sep 17
Application for concurrent registration on ”Prefecture Type JP Domain Name” started.

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.

 
2012 Oct 26
U.S. Microsot released "Windows 8"

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.

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2012 Oct 25
Amazon opened "Kindle Store" for Japan

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

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2012 Oct
Remote control virus incident using CSRF attached wide attention.

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.

 
2012 Oct
Prime minister of Japan and his cabinet opened an official account on "LINE"

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.

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2012 Nov 19
Application for general registration on ”Prefecture Type JP Domain Name” started.

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.

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2013
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2013 Jan
The Prime Minister's Office opend the official page on "Facebook"

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.

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2013 Apr 1
JPNIC revised the fee structure for IP addresses.

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.

 
2013 Apr 1
JPNIC's juridical personality by legal regulation changed.

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.

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2013 Apr 19
Revised Public Offices Election Act, that permits Internet election campaigns, was enacted.

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.

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2013 Jun 3
JPNIC adopted Inter-Registry Transfer Policy and started international transfer of IP address blocks.

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.

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2013 Oct 7
10 internet related organizations issued "Montevideo Statement on the Future of Internet Cooperation"

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.

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2013 Oct 23
First four applications for gTLDs accepted in 2012 were delegated

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.

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2013 Nov 13
Invitations from the public for "Google Glass Explorer Program" started

“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.

 
2014
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2014 Jan 1
Revised Copyright Act enacted

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.

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2014 Jan 21
The National Diet Library launched digitized material transmission service

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.

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2014 Jan 29
“.Tokyo” and “.Nagoya” were delegated as new geographic gTLD

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.

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2014 Feb 19
11 internet related organizations published "I* Leaders Cooperation Meeting, Santa Monica, 14 February 2014"

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.

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2014 Feb 21
“Internet White Paper ARCHIVES” page opened

image 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.

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2014 Feb 28
“Mt. Gox”, a bitcoin exchange, went bankrupt

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.

 
2014 Mar 17
The U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administratin announced its intention to transfer the Internet DNS function

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.

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2014 Mar 7
IRR/RPKI Survey Activity Report published

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".

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2014 Mar 2
“.Okinawa” was delegated as new geographic gTLD

“.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”.

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2014 Mar 11
“.Dnp” was delegated as the first brand gTLD in Japan

“.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.

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2014 Apr 23-24
NETmundial metting held

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”.

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2014 Apr 9
The late Dr. Masaki HIRABARU was listed in the ISOC Hall of Fame

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).

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2014 Apr 17
Restriction of "one registration for one organization" for organizational-type and geographic-type JP domain names relaxed

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.

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2014 Apr 3
“.Ryukyu” and “.Yokohama” were delegated as new geographic gTLD

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.

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2014 Jun 9
Report on "Name Collision problem" published

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.

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2014 Jun 1
NTTdocomo launched "Kake-hodai" a fully flat rate telephone service

“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.

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2014 Jun 12
Revised Pharmaceutical Affairs Act enacted

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.

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2014 Jun 18
“The Internet Governance Conference Japan (IGCJ)” established

image 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.

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2014 Jun 24
NTT docomo launched the first VoLTE service 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.

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2014 Jul 1
AS number transfer system started

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.

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2014 Jul 1
Re-allocation of IPv4 address returned to JPNIC started

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.

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2014 Aug 18
Registrant name non-disclosing function introduced to general-use and prefeture-type JP domains

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.

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2014 Oct 28
W3C published HTML5 as a recommendation

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.

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2014 Oct 1
Trial offer of ROA public cache server started

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).

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2014 Nov 1
Registratioin recovery service introduced to organizational-type and geographic-type JP domain names

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.

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2014 Nov 3
Japanese TLD introduced to prefecture-type JP comain 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.

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2014 Nov 17
“History of Internet Resources Management in Japan” published

image 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.

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2014 Dec 13
“.Osaka” was delegated as new geographic gTLD

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.

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2015
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2015 Jan 28
“.Kyoto” was delegated as new geographic gTLD

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.

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2015 Feb 24-3.6
APRICOT-APAN 2015 held

image 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.

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2015 Mar 3
Trial offer of RPKI system started

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.

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2015 Mar 18
Japanese Generation Panel (JGP) established

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).

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2015 Sep 30
SORACOM launched IoT platform service

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.

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2015 Oct
Number of JP domain name registrations exceeded 1.4 million.
2016
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2016 Mar 9-15
Google’s AlphaGo won against the top professional human Go player

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.

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2016 Mar 17
Law to ban drones in certain areas was implemented

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.

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2016 Apr 1
FinTech Center was established within the Bank of Japan

“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.

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2016 May 12
Dr. Suguru Yamaguchi passed away

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.

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2016 Jul 6
Pokémon Go was released in Japan

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.

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2016 Aug 5
The .jp top-level domain celebrated its 30th anniversary

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.

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2016 Sep 5
LINE Mobile service was launched

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.

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2016 Oct 1
Stewardship of IANA functions transition from the US government to global Internet community

image For many years, the United States (US) government has owned the stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) function, which manages important Internet resources such as IP addresses, domain names, and protocol port numbers. Recently, this stewardship has completely transferred from the US government to the private-led global Internet community. This has been a long process given that it has been over two-and-a-half years since the US Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced the intention to carry out this transition on March 14, 2014. Overall, it took 18 years since the US first proposed in 1998 that someday the IANA functions would be transferred over to the private sector.

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2016 Oct 20
Adding IPv6 address to G route server

The IPv6 address 2001:500:12::d0d has been added to the G route server among 13 DNS root servers. By completing this, it is now possible to resolve names from all root servers using the IPv6 addressing scheme.

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2016 Oct 21
Large-scale DDoS attack on Dyn

Dyn, which provides DNS services throughout the world, suffered the largest Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack to date, with the popular services such as Twitter, Spotify, and Reddit being rendered unusable. IoT devices infected with the “Mirai” malware were used as the primary attack source.

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2016 Dec 7
Massive closures of major curation sites

It was recently discovered that numerous copyright infringements and inaccurate articles were posted on “WELQ,” a curation or so-called “summary” site for healthcare information operated by the major game company, DNA. This triggered discovery of the similar problem in other curation sites operated by DNA. After this issue was reported largely in the media, all articles of “WELQ” were hidden on November 29th, 2016. Not long thereafter, on December 7, 2016, other curation sites operated by the company were also closed down. This same problem was found in the curation sites of companies, thus raising problem awareness for curation/summary sites in general.

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2017
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2017 Jan 1
Allocation of "020" as a dedicated M2M number started

The Telecommunications Numbering Regulations have been revised, and the allocation of telephone number bands starting with "020" has begun for M2M (Machine to Machine) services, which are in principle dedicated to data communication.

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2017 Jan 3
Revised Stalking Control Law came into effect

The Stalking Regulation Law has been amended to include not only sending e-mails, but also sending SNS messages and posting on blogs.

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2017 Jan
Many attacks on websites using WordPress

"WordPress", a popular open source CMS (Content Management System), was found to have a vulnerability in its REST API processing, and many attacks were launched to exploit this vulnerability. Since it was easy to alter existing content and since WordPress is a CMS used by many users, several websites in Japan were damaged by the attacks.

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2017 Feb 23
Google and CWI announced success in SHA-1 Hash Value Collision

CWI Amsterdam (Dutch National Institute for Mathematics and Informatics) and Google Inc. have succeeded in generating a collision (the same hash value for two different data) in the SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) algorithm, a one-way hash function. SHA-1 is a hash function established in 1995 by the U.S. National Instituteof Standards and Technology (NIST). SHA-1 has long been predicted to be cryptographically insecure. SHA-1 has been predicted to be cryptographically insecure for a long time, but now that this fact has been concretely confirmed, there is a greater need to migrate to other algorithms such as SHA-256.

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2017 Feb 22
Dentsu announced domestic Internet advertising media spending exceeded 1 trillion yen for the first time in 2016

In 2017, Internet advertising expenditures surpassed the 1 trillion JPY mark for the first time, reaching 1,509.4 billion JPY (115.2% year-on-year) while achieving double-digit growth for the fourth consecutive year. 2017 saw particularly high growth in operational advertising expenditures, which include programmatic advertising.

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2017 Mar
A series of attacks targeting vulnerabilities in Apache Struts 2

Struts 2 is a Java-based web application framework that is widely used as a tool to facilitate web development. The vulnerability allows an attacker to send a crafted HTTP request to execute arbitrary code, and several sites including those related to government offices and major companies were affected.

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2017 Apr 7
Google launched fact checking worldwide on search services

As the distribution of fake news and other information of dubious authenticity becomes more and more of an issue, Google, a major search service provider, has announced that it has implemented a feature that allows fact-checking of search results and news articles. Not all web pages will be fact-checked, but those that are will have to be fact-checked by a third-party organization (other than Google) when they appear in search results. However, when those pages are displayed in search results, the results of fact-checking by third-party organizations other than Google will now be displayed as well.

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2017 Apr 1
Revised law on Funds Settlement came into effect

The Law on Funds Settlement, which governs money orders, electronic money, and non-banking fund transfer business, has been amended to define virtual currencies and introduce regulations on virtual currency exchange business.

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2017 Apr
Rapid growth of "Mastodon" mini-blog accounts

Mastodon is a mini-blogging service like Twitter, but unlike Twitter, it is a decentralized system that allows anyone to publish a server. In Japan, mstdn.jp, which had been up and running since early on, was introduced to the media, and services such as Nico Nico Douga and pixiv opened their servers to the public, resulting in a rapid increase in users.

 
2017 May
WannaCry caused massive cyber attack

WannaCry is a type of malware called ransomware that targets Microsoft's Windows. It is called ransomware because when infected, it encrypts the contents of the user's hard drive, etc., and demands a ransom (ransom) to decrypt it. Ransomware itself has been around for a long time, but WannaCry caused so much damage due to its extremely strong infectious power that Microsoft even provided security patches for OS that were no longer supported. There were many cases of WannaCry in Japan, and the ransom demand messages were in Japanese, so it was widely covered by the media.

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2017 May 16
The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications announced the start of a comprehensive 5G demonstration test

The Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications (MIC) has announced the start of a comprehensive demonstration test of 5G, a next-generation mobile communication standard that will replace the currently popular 3.9G/4G standard, with the aim of launching services in 2020. 5G is characterized by its ability to connect a larger number of terminals (1,000 times the current number) at higher speeds (10Gbps) and with lower latency (on the order of milliseconds). On June 14, 2018, the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a standardization body that develops standards for mobile communication systems, announced that it had approved the completed the development of 5G standard specifications.

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2017 May 30
Enforcement of the Revised Personal Information Protection Law

The "Act on the Protection of Personal Information (Personal Information Protection Act)" has been amended to clarify the definition of personal information and to newly define "personal information requiring consideration". At the same time, the Personal Information Protection Law has been applied to small-scale businesses handling less than 5,000 cases, which were previously exempted from the law.

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2017 Jun 1-2
Internet Week Showcase held for the first time in Nagoya

image A digest version of Internet Week, "Internet Week Showcase in Nagoya", was held at Chukyo University's Nagoya campus. This was the first Internet Week Showcase to be held, and led to the holding of the second Internet Week Showcase in Hiroshima in 2018. The following year, in 2018, the second < href="https://www.nic.ad.jp/sc-hiroshima/" target="blank">Internet Week Showcase in Hiroshima was held.

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2017 Jun 26
National Police Agency opened "Cyber Police Agency"

The National Police Agency (NPA) has opened "Cyber Police Agency" as a portal site to disseminate information on the modus operandi and situation of cyber crimes and cyber attacks.

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2017 Jun 27
ICANN Kobe meeting to be held in March 2019

Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, has been selected to host the 64th ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) Conference. The meeting will be held from March 9-14, 2019, and will be the second ICANN meeting to be held in Japan since the sixth ICANN meeting in Yokohama in July 2000.

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2017 Jul 1
Revision of JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy

The Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (DRP) for JP domain names, the JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (JP-DRP) and the Rules of Procedure for the JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (JP-DRP Rules of Procedure), have been revised. The JP-DRP and the JP-DRP Rules of Procedure have been revised.

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2017 Aug 25
Misconfigured routing information caused large-scale route disruptions in Japan

Google Inc. advertised incorrect routing information on the Internet, causing major ISPs and e-commerce sites in Japan to temporarily lose connection to the network or become unstable, resulting in a large-scale outage.

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2017 Sep 27
ICANN announced postponement of Root Zone KSK Rollover implementation

On October 11, 2017, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) scheduled the first update (KSK rollover rollover) of the root zone KSK (key signing key), the DNSSEC trust anchor. (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) was scheduled for October 11, 2017. However, as it turned out that there were more resolvers than expected that were not ready, the rollover process was postponed. The rollover was originally targeted for implementation in the first quarter of 2018, but was rescheduled, and the rollover was finally implemented on October 12, 2018.

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2017 Sep 18
JPNIC President Shigeki Goto inducted into the ISOC Internet Hall of Fame

image JPNIC President Shigeki Goto has been announced by the Internet Society (ISOC) as one of the 14 members to be inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2017.

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2017 Sep 20
Temporary suspension of accepting IPv4 address transfers from the last /8 block
 
2017 Sep 5
MIC announced vulnerability survey on IoT devices

The Internet of Things (IoT) is becoming more and more popular, and the number of attacks against IoT is increasing every year. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) has announced that it will conduct a fact-finding survey focusing on critical IoT devices in cooperation with ICT-ISAC, a general incorporated association, and Yokohama National University. If vulnerable devices are identified, the Ministry will alert the owners and provide technical information to the manufacturers.

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2017 Oct 16
Multiple vulnerabilities called "KRACKs" discovered in WPA2

WPA2 (Wi-Fi Protected Access 2) is a type of protocol used for connection authentication and encryption in wireless LANs (Wi-Fi). Compared to WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and WPA, WPA2 was thought to be more secure because no vulnerabilities were found. However, WPA2 was also found to be vulnerable to KRACKs (Key Reinstallation AttaCKs), a procedure used by access points and clients to update encryption keys. Although the conditions for a successful attack were strict, WPA2 is used by a large number of users and almost all current Wi-Fi devices are affected, so this vulnerability was taken up by the media as a very serious problem immediately after it was discovered. Since then, OS and hardware vendors have been working quickly to update their products to address the issue.

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2017 Oct 3
MIC announced "Comprehensive Measures for IoT Security".

Following a study by the "Cyber Security Task Force" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the "IoT Security Comprehensive Measures" has been published.

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2017 Oct 6
Smart speaker "Google Home" available in Japan

Google Home, a smart speaker developed by Google Inc. has been launched in Japan. Smart speakers are devices that specialize in voice interaction. By talking to the speaker, you can perform simple searches, play timers and songs, and control home appliances.

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2017 Oct 26
JPCERT/CC released special website for ransomware countermeasures

JPCERT/CC (JPCERT/CC) has launched the "Ransomware Countermeasure Special Site" to introduce the types of ransomware that have been confirmed to be infected in Japan, countermeasures to prevent infection and reduce damage, and what to do in the event of infection. HREF="https://www.jpcert.or.jp/magazine/security/nomore-ransom.html" TARGET="_BLANK">"Ransomware Countermeasure Special Site" has been established.

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2017 Oct 30
Timemap released TIMEMAP, a search engine that outputs results in a chronological format.

Timemap, a general incorporated association, has released TIMEMAP, a search engine that outputs results in the form of a timeline. TIMEMAP allows users to enter up to three search terms, and a timeline is created for each term. At the same time, the frequency of the keyword's appearance in each year is displayed at the bottom, allowing users to follow the information in chronological order.

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2017 Nov 15
Amazon Echo smart speaker available in Japan

The Amazon Echo series of smart speakers, launched in 2014 ahead of other companies, is now available in Japan. A smart speaker is a device that specializes in voice interaction, and in the case of the Amazon Echo, it is characterized by the ability to receive various services such as search and music playback by talking to an assistant called Alexa.

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2017 Nov 16
Impress publishes iNTERNET magazine Reboot

INTERNET magazine was launched in 1994, at the dawn of the Internet in Japan, and was a specialized magazine that aimed to spread the Internet. The first issue of INTERNET magazine was reprinted in a smaller B5 size as part of the "iNTERNET magazine Reboot Project," a project to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the publisher, Impress Group. The first issue of INTERNET magazine has been reprinted in a smaller B5 size.

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2017 Nov 17
Japanese version of "Slack" released

The Japanese version of Slack, a chat service for businesses, has been released. The Japanese version of Slack has been available for messages, but with the release of the Japanese version, the menu can now be displayed in Japanese as well.

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2017 Dec 14
FCC repealed network neutrality rules

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has repealed its "net neutrality" rules, which prohibited Internet service providers from blocking certain content, limiting speeds, or imposing additional fees.

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2017 Dec
Government-sponsored cyber event's domain name re-registered as adult ad site

In November 2015, the domain name (cyber3conf-okinawa2015.jp) used for the international conference "Cyber3 Conference Okinawa 2015" held by the Cabinet Office was registered by a third party and an adult website was opened. Domain names that have expired and become obsolete can be registered again by anyone after a certain period of time, and the act of registering such domain names by third parties is called "drop catching".

 
2018
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2018 Jan 11
Sony started selling the new "aibo".

The "new aibo", autonomous entertainment robot, was launched by Sony Corporation. Its predecessor, "AIBO," was a popular product that sold more than 150,000 units in total from June 1999 to March 2006, and has been revived for the first time in about 18 years.

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2018 Jan 26
Coincheck lost 58 billion yen worth of virtual currency, including NEM

An unauthorised user acccessed Coincheck system to tranfer cryptocurrencies such as NEM. The culprit then later sold the stolen cryptocurrencies at a low rate on exchange website set up in darknet.

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2018 Jan 29
KDDI launched "KDDI IoTconnect LPWA" communication service

KDDI Corporation has launched "KDDI IoT Connect LPWA (LTE-M)," a cellular LPWA (Low Power Wide Area) communication service, a communication technology for IoT that utilizes cell phone networks.

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2018 Jan
Mining malware exploded in Japan

There have been reports about users attempting to illegally purchase cryptocurrencies by exploiting other users' computing resources in the process of 'Mining'. Each one of participants of cryptocurrency settlement receives a computing task, and the first to complete the task wins the settlement. Mining malwares is a generic name for malwares that are desgined for unauthorised mining, i.e., sending the outcoming cryptocurrencies to the attackers' wallet.

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2018 Feb 1
Malware using Intel CPU's Spectre/Meltdown Vulnerability discovered

Spectre/Meltdown had been vulnerabilities on major CPUs at the time of their discovery. Both were caused by mechanism for high speed processing which is why it caused a trade-off between speed and safety. Since these were vulnerabilities on hardwares, simply applying security patch was insufficient to resolve the problem, and had to be handled carefully.

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2018 Feb 1
Number of JP domain name registrations surpassed 1.5 million

The number of JP domain names registered increased from 50,000 in October 1998, 100,000 in September 1999, 500,000 in January 2003, and 1 million in March 2008, to 1.5 million in about 10 years after the 1 million mark was surpassed.

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2018 Feb 1
University of Tokyo established Virtual Reality Research and Education Center
2018 Mar 30
Google announced the end of the shortened URL service by goo.gl

Google decided to discontinue its shortened URL service, Google URL Shortner, due to the easing of the character limit in SNS and the fact that SNS themselves now offer shortened URL services. Firebase Dynamic Links, which is part of Firebase, the application development support environment provided by Google, is positioned as the successor service.

 
2018 Mar 1
Docomo and Panasonic started loint LPWA demonstration experiment

NTT DOCOMO, INC. and Panasonic Corporation announced the implementation of a joint demonstration experiment for the development of business model and technology, and technology verification for the practical application of IoT home appliances using LPWA (Low Power Wide Area).

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2018 Mar 14
Establishment of the NGN IPoE Council

The NGN IPoE Council was established as a council for service providers of IPv6 Internet services using the IPoE method, which is a communication method that does not require a network termination device in the NGN (Next Generation Network) provided by NTT East and West. The purpose of the Council is to conduct various projects, awareness raising, public relations activities, and policy proposals to promote the use of the Internet in Japan through the use of IPoE functions. Initial member were BBIX Corporation, Asahi Net Corporation, Internet Multifeed Corporation, Japan Network Enabler, Inc. Ltd. and FreeBit Corporation. In June 2020, this council was reorganized as the IPoE Council.

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2018 Apr 1
APNIC and CloudFlare launched free DNS cache server "1.1.1.1"

APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre), the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for the Asia Pacific region, and Cloudflare, a leading CDN (Content Delivery Network) operator, jointly launched a free public DNS service using APNIC's IP address "1.1.1.1". The service features fast response time and privacy-oriented policies such as not recording the IP addresses of users who use the service.

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2018 Apr 4
Up to 87 million users' information leaked on Facebook

Facebook presented that personal data of 87 million Facebook users had been illegitimately retrieved by an external consulting company. This consulting company was providing a service that manipulates voting by using SNS posts, which required analysis of personal data by AI.

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2018 Apr 25
The world's largest DDoS service, webstresser.org, exposed

DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) refers to an attack aimed at overwhelming the target computing resources by a flood of access requests from multiple sources. The website had been offering DDoS as a service, until OperationPowerOff, supported by Dutch police and National Crime Agency (UK), seized their domain name. The service is no longer available.

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2018 Apr 26
Google started to sell Google Wifi in Japan, a Wi-Fi Router with mesh Wi-Fi support

Google released a router that supports mesh Wi-Fi, which is Google's proprietary standard and automatically forms an optimal network among wireless LAN access points. Although there are already prior products on the market but the release of this product by Google has made mesh Wi-Fi widely known.

 
2018 Apr 13
Government requested ISPs to block pirate sites such as Manga Village

The Japanese government decided to develop a law at the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters and the Council of Ministers for Crime Control and Counter measures to deal with pirate sites that post manga and anime content without the permission of the copyright holders. At the same time, as an emergency measure until the legislation is enacted, the Council requested ISPs and other organizations to block connections to three websites: "Mangamura," "Anitube" and "Miomio". This request was strongly opposed by the Internet industry, academics, legal professionals, consumer groups, etc., on the grounds that it was a violation of the secrecy of communications.

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2018 Apr 23
Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA) established

In response to the increasing number of problems surrounding virtual currencies, the Japan Crypto-Currency Exchange Association (JVCEA) was established as a self-regulatory organization for the industry by 16 companies registered as virtual currency exchange businesses by the Financial Services Agency.

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2018 May 17
ICANN approved provisional specifications for gTLD registration data to comply with EU's GDPR

ICANN Board of Directors approved the Temporary Specification for gTLD Regsitration Data to maintain gTLD Registration Data compliant to European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which was to take full effect on May 25, 2018. This specification was temporary because it had been developed without following Generic Name Supporting Organization's Policy Development Process, which was to be followed after the temporary one took effect.

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2018 May 25
GDPR took effect in the EU

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which aims to protect the data of all individuals in the European Union (EU), came into effect on May 25, 2018, after a two-year transition period since its adoption in April 2016. The GDPR also applies to businesses outside the EU when handling the personal data of EU residents, and Japanese companies have been forced to deal with the massive fines that will be imposed if they violate the law.

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2018 May 18
Nihon Keizai Shimbun became first Japanese newspaper to offer subscriptions on amazon.co.jp as a test sale

Nikkei Inc. became the first major newspaper company to sell subscriptions on Amazon as a limited-time trial sale from May 18 to July 25, 2018.

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2018 Jun 15
Housing Accommodation Business Law (New Minpaku Law) enacted.

The Housing Accommodation Business Act (New Act on Minpaku), which was passed on June 9, 2017 and promulgated on June 16, 2017 to clarify the rules regarding private accommodations, came into effect on June 15, 2018. With the increase in the number of foreign tourists and other factors, the number of businesses and individuals embarking on the business of home-stay stays using Airbnb and other services has increased, but there have also been many cases of unauthorized home-stays and problems with nearby residents.

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2018 Jun 19
First Server's "Zenlogic" Hosting Experiences Massive Outage

From June 19 to July 9, 2018, First Server Corporation experienced a large-scale failure in its hosting service "Zenlogic", where the storage system became unstable intermittently and the server fell into a high-load state. The response to complete recovery took a long time, and recovery was finally completed after emergency maintenance was conducted from July 6 to 9, 2018 by cutting off all network connections to the outside world.

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2018 Jun 27
NTT Communications launched "OCN v6 Alpha", an IPv6

NTT Communications Corporation launched "OCN v6 Alpha", which supports IPv6 Internet access using Internet Protocol over Ethernet (IPoE) method for the Internet access service "OCN".

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2018 Jul 18
EU ordered Google to pay 570 billion yen in fines

The European Commission of the European Union (EU) ordered Google to pay a fine of 4.34 billion euros (about 570 billion yen) for violating EU competition law by forcing manufacturers to use its products to take advantage of its dominant position in the market.

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2018 Jul 2
Moscow Internet Exchange and JPIRR started mirroring

The IRR (Internet Routing Registry) is a database that stores information about the routes of networks, where the transmission paths change dynamically. Mirroring between JPIRR operated by JPNIC and Moscow Internet Exchange has started.

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2018 Aug 2
Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and JPCERT/CC warned of suspicious emails demanding virtual currency

In an examle suspicious e-mail JPCERT/CC offers, the sender not only demands cryptocurrency in exchange for deletion of data that they claim to have stolen, but also listed a valid password in the message part. This suggests the possibility where the attackers have actually retrieved the real password [and that reusing the same password for multiple different services is not safe].

 
2018 Aug 20
Blockchain-based Internet voting demonstration experiment in Tsukuba City

Japan's first Internet voting using blockchain and My Number cards was held in Tsukuba City, Ibaraki Prefecture. The subject was the final screening of the "Tsukuba Society 5.0 Social Implementation Trial Support Project," which aims to support trials for social implementation of advanced technologies in the city, and 13 proposals were selected for review.

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2018 Sep 3
DTI launched IPv6 IPoE Connection Service Using v6 Plus

DREAM TRAIN INTERNET INC. launched the IPv6 (IPoE) Connection Service, which supports IPv6 Internet access using Internet Protocol over Ethernet (IPoE), for the optical Internet connection service.

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2018 Sep 18
"Excite Mail" terminated its service.

Excite Ltd., a company that operates search services and portal sites in Japan, terminated its free e-mail service, "Excite Mail," which was once used by many users, after 14 years of operation.

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2018 Sep 19
Half of Commissioners opposed Website Blocking Legislation

The eighth and final meeting of the Task Force on Countermeasures against Piracy on the Internet, established by the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters of the Japanese government, was held on September 19, 2018. At the meeting, an unusual situation occurred when half of the committee members opposed the proposal for an interim summary presented by the secretariat. Subsequently, on October 30, 2018, a report from the review meeting was presented at the Content Field Meeting of the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters' Verification, Evaluation, and Planning Committee, and as a result, the government finally decided to abandon the legislation.

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2018 Oct 11
Root zone KSK rollover completed

ICANN made the first ever roll over of the Key Signing Key (KSK) for the root DNS zone for DNSSEC. The roll over had originally been planned to be done on October 11, 2027, but cancelled because ICANN obtained the data which showed that the resolvers on the Internet had not be prepared for the KSK as many as it expected. With the new target date set to one year later it made additional effort for raising awareness and preparation to have the rollover completed.

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2018 Nov 14
Google launched "YouTube Music" in Japan

Google launched the music app "YouTube Music" in Japan.

 
2018 Dec 30
The new Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, TPP11, issued. Copyright protection period extended to 70 years after death.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) was signed as an economic partnership agreement by a total of 12 countries: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam, and the United States. Then in January 2017, the United States left. As a result, the remaining 11 countries proceeded with consultations to bring the agreement into force, and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP, commonly known as TPP11), with some of its contents frozen, entered into force on December 30, 2018 in six countries, including Japan, which had already completed domestic procedures.

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2018 Dec 6
Large-scale communication failure at Softbank

Softbank Corp. experienced a major communication failure that disrupted its 4G (LTE) service for about four hours. The cause of the outage was a malfunction in the firmware update of Ericsson's Mobile Management Entity (MME) used by Softbank, which affected about 30 million users in Japan, as well as other carriers in other countries that use Ericsson's MME.

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2018 Dec 14
Leakage of 700,000 cases of personal information, including individual number, from a contractor of the National Tax Agency.

A company entrusted for data input/digitising tasks involved with official papers with Individual number (マイナンバー in Japanese) listed, further oursourced the task to another company, which is prohibited by law. The incident resulted in data leakage of around seven hundred thousand Jp people's full names, income and etc. National tax agency of Japan has established a project team for relapse prevention, to start a new system with more strict prohibition on outsourcing tasks involved with personal information management.

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2019
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2019 Jan 18
Huge leaked file of 2.7 billion items released on the Dark Web.

A large scale leakage of various account information (pairs of e-mail address and password) has been confirmed on a file sharing service hosted in darkweb. Among all the accounts, the number of those assgined to Jp users or at least related to Japan is more than 20 million. Specifically, accounts with relatively large significance that have leaked are mostly for government agencies or laboratories which frequently communicate with organisations in overseas.

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2019 Jan 1
Revised Copyright Law enacted.

The Copyright Act, which was amended on May 18, 2018, and promulgated on May 25, 2018, to flexibly respond to the progress of digitization and networking, enhance information access opportunities for people with disabilities, and promote the utilization of archives, came into effect on January 1, 2019 (except for some provisions).

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2019 Feb
CERN released App reproducing the WorldWideWeb, World first browser

image A web application that recreates the world's first web browser, WorldWIdeWeb, created by Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in December 1990, was released by CERN to celebrate the 30th anniversary of its development.

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2019 Feb 13
JPNIC Advisor, Professor Jun Murai, received the Legion of Honor

Professor Jun Murai of Keio University, who is also an advisor to JPNIC, was awarded the "Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur" for his contributions to the development of academic exchange between Japan and France through Internet research and other activities.

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2019 Feb 28
JPNIC Board member Yoshinobu Matsuzaki elected as APNIC EC (Executive Director)

At the APNIC 47 Conference (Daejeon, Korea), Yoshinobu Matsuzaki (Internet Initiative Japan Inc.), who is also a JPNIC board member, was elected as an APNIC EC (board member).

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2019 Feb 20
NICT and ISPs started "NOTICE", vulnerability scanning for IoT devices

NICT and ISPs in Japan has started a project where NICT input vulnerable (prone to guessing) passwords to accesible IoT devices via the Internet to detect devices under a severe risk of being attacked. In this project, detected devices are reported to their respective ISPs to encourage corresponding users to be aware of information security. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has set up a support centre to provide assistance for higher security measures.

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2019 Mar 12
Celebrating 30 years since the birth of the WWW, Tim Berners-Lee unveils his proposal for the future

To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the publication of the original proposal for HTML (HyperText Markup Language) in March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, an engineer at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), published a letter reflecting on the past 30 years and looking ahead to the future.

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2019 Mar 28
Masanori Maemura re-elected to ICANN Board of Directors

Akinori Maemura, a JPNIC staff who had been serving as an ICANN board member since November 2016, has been re-elected as an ASO elected board member of ASO(the address support organization) of ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).

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2019 Mar 9
ICANN Kobe Conference held for the second time in 19 Years in Japan

image ICANN64 was held for the second time in 19 years in Japan at the Kobe International Conference Center and the Kobe Portopia Hotel in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture.JPNIC supported the meeting as a member of the ICANN64 Local Host Committee.

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2019 Mar 31
"Geocities" closed.

"Geocities", that is the Japanese version of the free Web site creation service started in September 1997 and from March 2000 the service was offered as Yahoo! Geocities, ended on March 31, 2019. While the data would be stored for migration for one year after the termination, many people regretted the various famous sites of the past, which are no longer maintained and are expected to disappear without migration.

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2019 Apr 2
End of Google+

Google+, a social networking service launched by Google, Inc. in 2011, ended its service for individuals due to personal information leaks and a slump in the number of users. For businesses, it was renamed Google Currents and continued to exist.

 
2019 Apr 3
World's first smartphone-enabled 5G service offered simultaneously in many countries

Three South Korean telecom companies simultaneously launched mobile 5th generation communication (5G) services for smartphones at 11:00 a.m. on April 3. On the same day, Verizon Communications, a major U.S. telecommunications company, also launched its 5G service for smartphones in Chicago, Illinois and parts of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The compatible handset was the "moto z3", which was used with a special device. Verizon had announced that the service would start on April 11, but the launch was moved up after the news from South Korea. Starting with this, telecom companies in the U.S., Europe, China, and Australia also started to offer mobile 5G services in the first half or second half of 2019.

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2019 Apr 9
Adobe Shockwave support ended

Adobe Shockwave, a multimedia software developed by Macromedia Inc. in the U.S. and provided by Adobe Inc. after its acquisition by Adobe, ended saying that its role has been completed due to the evolution of Web technology and the spread of mobile devices.

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2019 Apr 16
Internet Media Association (JIMA) established

In response to the rapid development of Internet media, the Internet Media Association (JIMA) was established as a voluntary organization as an industry group to promote the sound development of these media and to share and resolve issues. Later, on June 22, 2021, it became a general incorporated association and became the Internet Media Association, Inc.

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2019 May 1
The new era "Reiwa" started.

The Heisei era, which lasted for about 30 years from January 8, 1989 (Heisei 1) to April 30, 2019 (Heisei 31), come to an end, and the new era "Reiwa" started.

 
2019 Jun 2
Google Cloud outage temporarily disabled YouTube, Google Mail and other services in eastern U.S.

Google Cloud experienced an outage, causing Google Search, G Suite, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, YouTube, and many other services to be disconnected for about four hours around the world. The outage affected not only Google's services, but also those of other companies using Google Cloud, such as Apple's iCloud. The cause of the outage, according to Google, was that a configuration change on a small number of servers was accidentally applied to a large number of servers in multiple regions.

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2019 Jun 7
Revised Copyright Law took effect in EU

The Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM Copyright Directive), adopted by the Council of the European Union on April 15, 2019 and enacted on April 17, 2019, entered into force on June 7, 2019. The directive requires platformers to take action against copyright infringement by users, and also requires news sites to pay media organizations for the amount of hyperlinks they use to news articles. When the latter provision was first proposed, the term "link tax" was bandied about and caused quite a stir in the public.

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2019 Jun 18
Facebook launched its own virtual currency.

Facebook announced "Libra" as its own virtual currency using blockchain technology. Initially, it was intended to be implemented in 2020, but the name was later changed to "Diem" and development has continued, and as of January 2022, it has yet to be issued.

 
2019 Jun 14
Law to prevent unauthorized resale of tickets went into effect.

The "Act on Securing the Proper Distribution of Box Office Tickets by Prohibiting the Unauthorized Resale of Specified Box Office Tickets (Ticket Fraudulent Resale Prohibition Act)," which was enacted on December 8, 2018 and promulgated on December 14, 2018, came into effect on June 14, 2019. With the enactment of this law, resale on the Internet, which was not subject to regulation as not being a "public place" under the previous nuisance prevention ordinance by local governments, is now subject to regulation.

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2019 Jun 18
"circleksunkus.jp" sold for over 60 million yen.

The JP domain name "circleksunkus.jp", which had been used by Circle K Sunkus, a major convenience store chain, but was no longer in use due to the merger with FamilyMart, was auctioned for approximately 60 million yen on onamae.com, a domain name registrar service operated by GMO Internet, Inc. The fact was covered by various online media due to the high price of the JP domain name and become increasingly popular as an example of JP domain name drop-catching (the re-registration of expired domain names by third parties).

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2019 Jul 9
Google Chrome rolled out annoying ad blocker worldwide
2019 Jul 11
French Senate approved introduction of digital taxation in anticipation of GAFA

The French Parliament passed a bill for a Digital Services Tax (DST) that would impose a 3% tax on IT companies with annual sales in France of at least 25 million EUR and global sales of at least 750 million EUR. The DST caused a major outcry from the U.S. government as it was aimed at major U.S. platform companies, and the U.S. brought up the issue of imposing sanctions. On October 21, 2021, a compromise was reached between the U.S. and the U.K., Italy, Spain, and Austria, which are also considering the introduction of the DST, and the U.S. In exchange for the impounding countries dropping their own taxes, the U.S. also decided not to implement sanctions.

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2019 Jul 29
Largest ever leak of over 100 million customers' information at US financial giant Capital One

Capital One which provides its services on AWS has been attacked and their customer passwords have leaked because of a vulnerability in firewall settings, which are independently operated by Capital One (and is therefore unique to its services). This is one of the typical examples indicating that secure information management over cloud services is based on (1) robustness of a cloud system itself and (2) robustness of services/applications hosted on the cloud that are operated by the responsible cloud users (service providers).

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2019 Jul 3
New allocation of IPv4 addresses from IPv4 address space already returned to JPNIC ended

At the APNIC 47 conference held on February 25-28, 2019, a consensus was reached on prop-127:Change maximum delegation size of 103/8 IPv4 address pool to a /23.
On July 3, 2019, a policy document reflecting the proposal was enacted by APNIC, and JPNIC has terminated the allocation of IPv4 addresses with a maximum size of /22 from the inventory returned to JPNIC, as of 23:59 (Japan time) on Wednesday, July 3, 2019.

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2019 Jul 2
SoftBank provided 5G pre-service at Fuji Rock
 
2019 Jul 2
Unauthorized access damage at 7pay

7pay developed by Seven Pay Co., Ltd, was exploited for unauthorised charging/payment and the damage amount counts up to over 38 million yen (808 users) in total. According to a cyber security research company, the cause of the indicent was that the system lacked security measures against (1) login from multiple devices and (2) additional authentication mechanism e.g., two-factor authentication.

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2019 Aug 9
Huawei announced its own OS, HarmonyOS

The Chinese company Huawei announced its own operating system, HarmonyOS, which was initially intended for IoT devices and has since been adopted in some of the smartphones and tablets sold by Huawei. The reason behind this is that the U.S. embargo on Huawei and other factors have made the continued use of Android uncertain.

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2019 Aug 23
Large-scale AWS outage occurred

A large-scale failure of AWS (Amazon Web Services) occurred in the Tokyo region, causing AmazonEC2 and part of AmazonEBS to be unavailable for about six hours. The cause of the failure was a malfunction in the cooling control system, and it affected the use of many services and made it impossible to connect to corporate websites.

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2019 Aug 25
The Library of Congress officially launched "Japan Search"

As a portal site for digital contents in Japan, Japan Search operated by the National Diet Library, was released.

It enables users to search, browse, and utilize metadata of contents in various fields such as books, official documents, cultural properties, fine arts, humanities, natural history/science and engineering, academic assets, broadcast programs, and movies.

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2019 Aug 30
MIC released mesures on "Building Sustainable Local Communities in the Age of Society 5.0" as key mesures in 2020

The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) released "Building Sustainable Local Communities in the Age of Society 5.0 (MIC Priority Policies 2020)". The measures that should be proactively addressed as priority areas include creating a new flow of people to regional areas by correcting the concentration of people in Tokyo, upgrading industrial and administrative services using the technologies of the Society 5.0 era, securing a stable local administrative and financial base, and ensuring regional safety and security.

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2019 Sep 25
Cloudflare launched Warp VPN service

Cloudflare, a leading CDN (Content Delivery Network) provider, launched its free VPN service, WARP. WARP was releaced 2 months behind the schedule although it was planned to start offering the service in July.

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2019 Sep 30
The late Suguru Yamaguchi, former JPNIC board member, inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame

image The Internet Society (ISOC) has announced the 11 members who will be inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame in 2019. The late Dr. Suguru Yamaguchi(passed away on May 9,2016), one of the founding members of the WIDE Project , a pioneer in the field of cyber security research and a JPNIC board member has been inducted into the hall.

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2019 Sep 20
Docomo launched 5G pre-service
 
2019 Sep 24
Former operator of "Manga-mura" deported to Japan

The former operator of "Manga-mura," a well-known pirate website that uploads manga and other content without the permission of the copyright holder, was detained in the Philippines, where he was staying, and was arrested by the Fukuoka Prefectural Police after being deported back to Japan.

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2019 Sep 26
Amazon's order history leaked

An incident was confirmed at amazon.co.jp, because of a misconfiguration that happened in a system maintainance. Some users were temporary able to view personal information such as part of payment information, user full name, delivery address and etc, that belong to accounts other than their own. Amazon reported about the incident to Personal Information Protection Commission JAPAN, and the commision gave an administrative guidance for relapse prevention and also instructed Amazon to reply to inquiries regarding the incident.

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2019 Oct 5
PayPay service launched

PayPay Corporation, a joint venture between SoftBank Corp. and Yahoo Japan Corporation, launched PayPay, a barcode-based payment service. Although PayPay is a relative latecomer to the cashless payment service, it has grown rapidly through commercials and large-scale campaigns. The SoftBank Group announced afterwards in 2020 that they would use PayPay as a unified brand for the group's financial services.

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2019 Oct 8
NICT succeeded in the world's first 1 petabit per second switching experiment

The Network Systems Laboratory of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) successfully conducted the world's first switching experiment at 1 petabit per second (1Pbps). 1Pbps is equivalent to 10 million channels of 8K broadcasting, which is more than 100 times the communication capacity of the conventional backbone network.

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2019 Nov 1
Russia enacted Internet sovereignty law

In the Russian Federation, the Law on Amendments to the Law on Communications and the Law on Information, Information Technology and Information Protection of 2019 (the Law on Sovereign Internet) entered into force, which allows for the blocking of the Internet within and outside Russia in the event of an emergency. In addition to requiring telecom operators to develop technical means for restricting access, the law also provides for regular training on national security on the Internet.

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2019 Nov 6
Former Trend Micro employee illegally took customer information

Customer information about foreign users (of services targeted at individuals outside Japan) has leaked from Trend Micro. A former employee who worked as a technical support had stolen 120 thousand customer information and sold it to third parties. The sold information consists of full names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers and etc., and was used for telephone frauds by attackers impersonating technical support staff.

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2019 Nov 13
ISOC announced sale of .org

ISOC (Internet Society) has announced the proposed sale of its subsidiary, PIR (Public Interest Registry), which is the registry for .org, to an investment firm called Ethos Capital. The announcement of the sale caused a lot of controversy in the community, as both ISOC and PIR are non-profit organizations and .org also had oriented to a non-profit at first. Subsequently, ICANN, which has a gTLD registry agreement with PIR, made a decision on April 30, 2020 not to approve the proposed sale, and PIR will continue to be a subsidiary of ISOC.

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2019 Nov 2
KDDI launched 5G pre-service for drone racing
 
2019 Nov 26
Japan Federation of IT Organizations established Cyber Security Committee

Information Technology Federation of Japan is one of the largest coaliations of IT organisations in Japan. The federation established Cyber Security Committee to promote necessary cyber security measures. The main activities of the committee are (1) studying on measures to promote cyber security (2) establishment of a system and infrastructure to support cyber security and (3) sharing the international situation to ensure cyber security.

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2020
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2020 Jan 15
MS released Chromium-based new "Microsoft Edge"

When Microsoft Edge had been first developed, it had used EdgeHTML as its rendering engine, which was inherited from Internet Explorer. But it switched to Blink, which is used in Chromium, an open source web browser. This makes it more compatible with Google Chrome.

 
2020 Jan 30
Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department observed increased access of Mirai variants targeting IoT devices

Mirai is a name for a malware family whose target is routers and IoT devices. Infected devices act as a part of botnet (a set of devices exploited by a central server for attack). The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department had continuously been observing the Internet traffic and discovered traces of attempts of forcing downloading and executing files named "Mozi.m" or "Mozi.a". The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department concluded that the discovered traffic was associated with subspecies of Mirai and is analysing them per destination port.

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2020 Jan 31
Unauthorized access to NEC's defense business unit

There were unauthorised accesses to internal servers at an NEC's department involved with defence industry. NEC reported that no information leakage was confirmed in the incident. The cause of the incident was that they could not detect (1) the initial attack which happened few years before the unauthorised accesses and (2) expansion of infection inside the department. Illegitimately accessed 27,445 files did not contain any personal information and secrets, according to the report.

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2020 Feb 1
Britain left the European Union

Following the June 2016 referendum in which a majority voted in favor of leaving the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom, a member since its inception, left the EU. The move, known as "Brexit," had many social consequences, but it also led to a number of events in the Internet world, such as the failure of some registrants from the United Kingdom to meet the registration requirements for the ccTLD ".eu" for EU citizens.

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2020 Feb 11
Sprint and T-Mobile merger approved

The planned merger of Sprint, a major U.S. carrier that became part of the SoftBank Group after its acquisition in July 2013, and T-Mobile US, another major carrier, was approved by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in October 2019 after the two parties had reached an agreement in 2018.

However, the merger was delayed after the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, the State of New York and others filed injunction claims. The U.S. District Court rejected the requests, and the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile US was approved.

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2020 Feb 6
Defense Ministry announced unauthorized access to Kobe Steel and Pasco

In a series of cyber attacks against private enterprises associated with defence industry, Kobe steel and PASCO CORPORATION (aerial survey company) also experienced unauthorised accesses. In both cases, no secrets designated by the ministry of defence in Japan has leaked, according to their reports. However, in Kobe steel's case, files that contain some of personal information related to the ministry might have leaked. In PASCO's case, professional agency investigated the incident and concluded that there was a group of Chinese associated with the incident, and that no personal information or any other secrets have leaked.

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2020 Feb 12
GMO opened ".gmo" exclusively for IoT devices

GMO Internet, Inc. announced that the new gTLD ".gmo", for which the company applied and appointed as the registry, would be released as a domain name dedicated to IoT devices.

After a period of preparation and application to ICANN, general registration began on January 26, 2021.

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2020 Mar 11
WHO declared pandemic of new coronavirus infection

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) is "equivalent to a pandemic", as patients began to emerge around the end of 2019 and both infected areas and infected people are rapidly expanding in 2020. This led to the spread of restrictions on going out and holding events in Japan and other countries, as well as the promotion of remote work and the active online hosting of events.

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2020 Mar 11
Dentsu Says Japan's Internet Ad Spending Surpasses TV

Dentsu Inc. released "Advertising Expenditures in Japan in 2019," which estimates Japan's total advertising expenditures and advertising expenditures by media and industry. It estimated that Internet advertising expenditures exceeded 2 trillion yen, surpassing TV media advertising expenditures for the first time.

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2020 Mar 25
NTT Docomo launched 5G service

NTT DOCOMO, INC. finally launched its "5G" service on March 25, 2020.The company started basic research on the 5th generation mobile communication system in 2010. Since then, it has promoted research and development of 5G, verified the usefulness of services using 5G in a demonstration experiment in 2014, and launched 5G pre-service on September 20, 2019.

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2020 Mar 26
KDDI launched 5G service

On March 26, 2020, KDDI Corporation launched "au 5G," a commercial service for the fifth-generation mobile communications system "5G," based on the concept of "UNLIMITED WORLD au 5G," which enables the free handling of large amounts of data without stress and frees the user from conventional restrictions.

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2020 Mar 27
Softbank launched 5G service

On March 27, 2020, SoftBank Corp. launched SoftBank 5G, a fifth-generation mobile communications system (5G) commercial service capable of high-speed, high-capacity, low-latency communications.

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2020 Apr 30
ICANN disapproved ISOC's proposed sale of the Public Interest Registry (PIR)

On November 13, 2019, ISOC (Internet Society) announced the proposed sale of its subsidiary PIR (Public Interest Registry), the registry for .org, to an investment firm called Ethos Capital. On April 30, 2020, ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which has a gTLD registry agreement with PIR, did not approve the proposed sale at its board meeting. The sale of PIR would not take place.

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2020 Apr 21
Information sharing meeting on ISOC's plan to sell Public Interest Registry (PIR)

JPNIC and the Japan Chapter of ISOC co-hosted an information sharing meeting regarding the Internet Society's (ISOC) plan to sell its subsidiary Public Interest Registry (PIR), the registry operator for .org, which was announced in November 2019. The meeting was co-hosted by JPNIC and ISOC Japan Chapter.

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2020 Apr 7
Emergency declaration issued under the Act on Special Measures against Pandemic Influenza.

In the beginning of 2020, patients with the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) began to appear in various parts of the world, and on January 16, 2021, the first case was confirmed in Japan. A state of emergency was declared based on the Act on Special Measures against H1N1 Influenza, which came into effect on March 13 and 14. Initially, Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa, Osaka, Hyogo, and Fukuoka prefectures were covered by the emergency declaration, but on April 16, it was extended to all prefectures and continued until May 25. After that, a total of four emergency declarations were issued over the next two years, from January 8 to March 21, April 25 to June 20, and July 12 to September 30, 2021.

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2020 Apr 8
Rakuten Mobile launched its mobile carrier service.

Rakuten Mobile, Inc., which had been preparing to launch services as a Mobile Network Operator (MNO) starting with the acquisition of radio station licenses in the Kanto, Tokai and Kinki regions on January 23, 2019, fully launched its mobile carrier services on April 8, 2020.

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2020 May 22
Apple and Google released new coronavirus intense contact notification API

Google and Apple have jointly released an API for detecting and notifying the possibility of close contact as a countermeasure against the new coronavirus. The detection of close contact is done by connecting smartphones using Bluetooth, and is also used in Japan for the new coronavirus contact confirmation application (COCOA) provided by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

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2020 May 1
Amended Funds Settlement Act and Amended Financial Instruments and Exchange Act took effect

The revised Law on Funds Settlement and the revised Financial Instruments and Exchange Law, which were enacted on May 31, 2019 and promulgated on June 7, 2019, came into effect on May 1, 2020. The revised law changes the name "virtual currency" to "crypto-assets" and establishes provisions to protect the assets of crypto-asset users.

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2020 Jun 5
Parliament passed revised Copyright Act, including measures against Internet piracy

The revised Copyright Act, which was enacted on June 5, 2020 and promulgated on June 12, 2020, came into effect on January 1, 2021. In addition to strengthening measures against piracy on the Internet, the scope of illegal downloading, which was previously limited to music and video, has been expanded to include all copyrighted works, including comics, books, and programs.

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2020 Jul
Massive Twitter hijacking occurred

Spear phishing, a type of social engineering occured at Twitter. The target Twitter employees leaked some credential information, which eventually allowed the attackers to access internal tools for Twitter accounts management. The attackers then hijacked 130 Twitter accounts of celebrities, and sent tweets, DMs, or downloaded some data. Twitter reported that in phishing telephone calls, the attackers not only retrieved credential information for Twitter's internal network but also the target emplyees' own credential information. In addition, not all the first targets had access permission to account management tools. The attackers exploited the first targets' credentials to contact/access other employees with necesary permission.

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2020 Jul
"Facebook Messenger" hijacking spread

According to IPA's investigation, the incident can be summarised as follows: A friend sends a message in Facebook Messenger which appears to contain a link to a video. When the user taps the video link, a false login page is displayed, which aims at stealing credential information. It is also possible that the friend who sent the original message had also been hacked by the same method. After entering credential information at the false login page, a false security warning pops up and the page transits to another page that recommends installation of a security application. Considering the link's behaviour, it is thought to be an affiliate aimed at obtaining PPI; Pay Per Install (reward for the number of successful installations).

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2020 Sep 4
Emotet infection spreaded

Emotet is a type of malware that spreads via attached files or the body part of e-mails. When a target executes the file downloaded from a link in an attack e-mail, a message appears to lead the user to enable macro or contents. It is reported that enabling the offered option is the direct cause of infection. The method has grown more trickey since Emotet distribution restarted in July (the same year). For instance, there were spam e-mails with two files attached to them; one for Emotet distribution and another being a real/appropriate file that originally was stolen from a legitimate e-mail.

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2020 Sep 14
JP-DRP arbitration case study report released

JPNIC operates and manages the JP-DRP (JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy). In order to improve the dispute resolution system, JPNIC has been examining the JP-DRP Policy and Procedural Rules for possible revisions. As part of this examination, JPNIC has published a report on the results of its examination of awards rendered by the Japan Intellectual Property Arbitration Center, a dispute resolution organization. This is the first time in 14 years, since March 2006. The report includes award cases that have been reviewed since the publication of the previous report.

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2020 Sep 23
JP domain name dispute resolution policy (JP-DRP) 20th anniversary symposium held

image On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the adoption of the JP-DRP, JPNIC held a symposium to bring together all parties concerned in Japan to discuss the JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (JP-DRP), an alternative dispute resolution procedure established to resolve disputes over JP domain names.

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2020 Sep 8
Unauthorized use of docomo account service uncovered

DoCoMo account service is offered by NTT DoCoMo, where users can link an existing bank account to a "DoCoMo account", and charge money from the bank account for payment with smartphone. In this incident, illegitimate users impersonating bank account holders opened new DoCoMo account for unauthorised charge to steal the money in the original bank account. DoCoMo account service did not require telephone number for registration so that their users did not necessarily have to be DoCoMo mobile user. However, because the system allowed users to register a new account or idenfity themselves with an e-mail address only, it served as a critical vulnerability and was exploited for attack.

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2020 Sep 16
100 million yen leaked due to unauthorized access at SBI Securities

In this incident, false accounts were registered at Japan Post bank and MUFG bank, with exactly the same holder names as those of the existing accounts at SBI SECURITIES Co.,Ltd., for illegal remittance. One and only important condition on remmitance from a securities account to a bank account is that the holder names of the two are equal, which is believed to be exploited for the attack.

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2020 Sep 23
NTT DOCOMO launched 5G service using millimeter wave
 
2020 Sep 29
NTT announced that NTT DOCOMO becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) announced that it would make NTT DOCOMO, INC. a wholly-owned subsidiary through Takeover Bid (TOB).
The TOB was conducted from September 30 to November 16, 2020, and upon the announcement of the completion of the TOB on November 17, 2020, NTT DOCOMO was delisted.

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2020 Oct 1
Revised "JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy and Procedural Rules for JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy" came into effect.

The JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (JP-DRP) and the Rules of Procedure for the JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy have been revised in order to support electronic procedures.

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2020 Oct 1
Stock trading halted for the day due to a failure of the Tokyo Stock Exchange's "arrowhead" system.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange's stock trading system "arrowhead" experienced a malfunction that resulted in the suspension of trading in all stocks for the day. The cause was a failure to switch the storage device, and the FSA issued a business improvement order to the company and its parent company, Japan Exchange Group, and the president of the company resigned.

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2020 Nov 3
JPNIC President Shigeki Goto (Professor Emeritus, Waseda University) awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Rosette.

Dr. Shigeki Goto, JPNIC's Chairman of the Board of Directors since 2005, was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Rosette in the autumn of 2020. It is a award to individuals who have accumulated meritorious service over many years in the public service or public affairs of the national or local governments and have achieved outstanding results.He accepted the award on behalf of JPNIC.

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2020 Nov 17
Internet Week 2020 held online

image "Internet Week 2020" was held online. In order to prevent the spread of the new COVID-19, many other events, both domestic and international, were held online during this and the following year using web conferencing/seminar tools such as Zoom, Webex, and Teams.

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2020 Dec 31
Adobe Flash support ended

Adobe Flash, developed by FutureWave Software in the U.S. and later switched to Macromedia in the U.S. and then to Adobe in the U.S., was no longer provided. It had been used by many users over the years as software for creating and providing websites with animation and movement, and attracted users because it was highly convenient and ran on a wide variety of operating systems. However it was also famous for its frequent security problems and frequent updates during its availability.

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