The Asia Pacific Network Information Centre or APNIC is the Regional Internet address Registry (RIR) intended for the Asia-Pacific Region. It is one of the world’s five RIRs, and it is part of the NRO or the Number Resource Organization.
This RIR provides numbers resource allocation and registration services that support the global operation of the net. They have an active role if you want to buy IPv4 address space for your business.
APNIC is a non-profit, membership-based organization. It has a range of different members that includes the following: the internet service providers or ISP, telecommunication providers, data centers, colleges and universities, banks and financial institutions, national internet registries, and other groups and organizations that are similar and have their own networks.
MAIN FUNCTIONS OF APNIC
Here are the main functions and responsibilities of APNIC:
- APNIC is responsible for allocating the IPv4 and IPv6 address space and autonomous system numbers. So if you want to buy IPv4 address space, consider APNIC’s role. You will however have to contact a reliable IPv4 broker or a company that is willing to sell their available or surplus IPv4 address space.
- They are also accountable for maintaining the public APNIC Whois Database for the entire Asia Pacific region.
- APNIC is likewise in charge of the Reverse DNS delegations.
- They are also responsible for providing technical skills training.
- APNIC is in charge of representing the interests of the region’s internet community in the international arena.
They also manage the internet number resources based on the policies and regulations that have been developed through an open process of consultation and consensus. It is known as the PDP or the Policy Development Process.
The Policy Development Process of APNIC
The policies of APNIC were drafted and developed by its multiple memberships and, at the same time, by the broader internet community. The forums for policy development are the face-to-face Open Policy Meetings. These meetings take place or occur twice a year, and the public mailing list discussions of the Special Internet Groups (SIG).
The open PDP of APNIC also calls upon the stakeholders who are or may be interested in Internet number resources from across the globe to join and participate. However, APNIC focuses mainly on their specific region rather than somewhere else.
Those invited include the following:
- Government representatives
- Regulators
- Educators and media representatives
- The technical community
- The Civil society
- And other non-profit organizations
The PDP of APNIC is:
- OPEN
- Anyone can propose or suggest policies
- Everyone can freely discuss the policy proposals
- TRANSPARENT
- It publicly documents all of the policy discussions and the pertaining decisions made.
- USES BOTTOM-UP APPROACH
- It is the community that drives policy development.
THE STRUCTURE OF APNIC
Every APNIC Annual General Meeting (AGM), an election is held, and it takes place during the AMM or the APNIC Member Meeting, usually every February. The voting takes place on-site, which is during the meeting proper and before the actual meeting through an online poll.
THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OF APNIC
Every member of the APNIC Executive Council or the EC is treated as an individual and not as a representative of any other party or even any other member. Thus, these members should act at all times in the best interests of the RIR and the stakeholders involved. The APNIC EC holds face-to-face meetings at four regular scheduled sessions every year.
APNIC SECRETARIAT
The APNIC Secretariat main function is to serve its members, the stakeholders and the internet community stakeholders in the entire Asia Pacific region.
Their jobs and responsibilities are designed to help the APNIC community achieve its goals and objectives. The APNIC’s staff are responsible in doing a lot of day-to-day works. It is structured and designed into five different divisions, namely:
- The Services
- The Technical
- The Business
- Communications
- And the Learning & Development
These five divisions constitute all of the activities of APNIC, and they also include acting as a core or as the primary source of information for their members.
CORE SERVICES
Internet Number Resource Delegation
APNIC delegates the two IP addresses, IPv4 and IPv6, and ASNs, based on the policies and regulations developed by the community. Thus, when you want to buy IPv4 address for your business, remember that APNIC allocates this IP.
According to demonstrated need, these IPs and AS number delegation is subject to specific criteria.
The Whois Database of APNIC
The APNIC Whois Database
The Whois Database details of IP addresses and the AS numbers were initially allocated by APNIC. It shows the groups and organizations that hold the resources, where the allocations were made and the contact details for the network. The users can then search and look at the database of Whois for any information. This information may pertain to these resources for network troubleshooting or assisting in tracking network abuse. The groups that have those resources are responsible for updating their data and information in the database.
The internet number resources must be registered accurately and correctly to fulfill the goals and objectives of addressing policy as laid out by the PTI or the Public Technical Identifiers. The PTI is the one that is mainly responsible for the operation of the IANA or Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions. This accurate registration of the usage of the resources is a vital and important role that APNIC plays in the operation of the net.
The database can be searched by maximizing the web interface which can be found on its website. You can also search the database by directing your whois client to whois.apnic.net. You can check this by writing: whois -h whois.apnic.net 203.37.255.97.
Registration Data Access Protocol
APNIC offers RDAP or the Registration Data Access Protocol as an alternative to the Whois. This was designed to address problems in the whois service, the most vital of which are the standardization of questions and inquiries and its corresponding replies; the internationalization considerations to cater for languages other than the English language in data objects; the redirection capacities and abilities in order to let seamless referrals to other registrants.
Network Abuse
SPAM or Hacking are just some of the many cases of network abuse, and users mistakenly interpret references to apnic.net when searching whois to indicate that APNIC is the source of the abuse. Instead, these references to APNIC simply mean that the APNIC delegated the address space in question to an organization within the Asia Pacific region. They have no direct authority to prevent and avoid these types of network abuse.
Moreover, the group does not have the technical capacity and ability to suspend an internet service, and it has no mandate to take back address registrations. They also have no powers to do investigations or have any police authority to do such action. APNIC is in fact, is, in the same boat as any other IP address or DNS registry across the globe.
Reverse DNS Delegation
APNIC manages reverse DNS delegations for the two IPs, the IPv4 and IPv6. They only delegate the authority of reverse zones to the DNS name service provided through domain objects. Business who wants to buy IPv4 address or IPv6 address should get in touch with APNIC. You ill however have to deal with reliable brokers or middlemen to buy available IPv4 space.
Resource Certification
APNIC offers a Resource Certification service. The resource certification is a robust security framework that is utilized to verify the association between the specific IP address blocks of the ASNs and its holders of those internet number resources.
They also introduced Resource Certification to enhance inter-domain security in the region and further improve and develop the value of the data found in the APNIC Whois Database to verify the resource holder’s right-to-use.
RPKI or Resource Public Key Infrastructure is the validation format for the Resource Certification that allows public network users to verify the authenticity of data that has been signed digitally by the data originator.
Aside from the services mentioned above, APNIC also has other services that it offers to stakeholders and members. These services include the following:
Training at APNIC
They conduct numerous training courses to members and stakeholders. The training is conducted in various locations across the Asia Pacific region. The training and the seminars were designed in order to educate the participants to proficiently configure, manage, and administer their internet services and infrastructure, and at the same time embrace the current best practices.
Technical Conferences at APNIC
Aside from the numerous training courses, APNIC also holds two conferences annually. The conferences take place in different locations around the Asia Pacific Region, with the first conference held with the APRICOT or the Asia Pacific Internet Conference on Operational Technologies. The other forum is a stand-alone one.
These two meetings have a series of workshops sessions on various topics and issues, which includes routing, IPv6, and the network security. It also tackles the plenary and the conference tracks on operational topics of today or existing interest.
Some of the Past and Recent Conference Schedules are shown in the table below:
| APNIC 29 | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | 24 February – 5 March 2010 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2010 |
| APNIC 30 | Gold Coast, Australia | 24–27 August 2010 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 31 | Hong Kong SAR, China | 21–25 February 2011 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT and APAN 2011 |
| APNIC 32 | Busan, South Korea | 28 August – 1 September 2011 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 33 | New Delhi, India | 27 February – 2 March 2012 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2012 |
| APNIC 34 | Naga World, Phnom Penh, Cambodia | 21–31 August 2012 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 35 | Singapore | 25 February – 1 March 2013 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2013 |
| APNIC 36 | Xi’an City, Shaanxi Province, China | 20–30 August 2013 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 37 | Petaling Jaya, Malaysia | 18–28 February 2014 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2014 |
| APNIC 38 | Brisbane, Australia | 9–19 September 2014 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 39 | Fukuoka, Japan | 24 February – 6 March 2015 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2015 |
| APNIC 40 | Jakarta, Indonesia | 3–10 September 2015 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 41 | Auckland, New Zealand | 15–26 February 2016 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2016 |
| APNIC 42 | Colombo, Sri Lanka | 28 September – 5 October 2016 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 43 | Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam | 20 February – 2 March 2017 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2017 |
| APNIC 44 | Taichung, Taiwan | 7–14 September 2017 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 45 | Kathmandu, Nepal | 19–28 February 2018 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2018 |
| APNIC 46 | Nouméa, New Caledonia | 6–13 September 2018 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 47 | Daejeon, South Korea | 18–28 February 2019 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2019 |
| APNIC 48 | Chiang Mai, Thailand | 5–12 September 2019 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 49 | Melbourne, Australia | 12–21 February 2020 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2020 |
| APNIC 50 | Online | 8–10 September 2020 | Standalone Meeting |
| APNIC 51 | Online | 22 February – 4 March 2021 | Held in conjunction with APRICOT 2021 |
Research Done at APNIC
The Apnic Labs also offer research, measurement, and the technical reports on the maximization of internet number resources within the net. One of these is the recent deployment of IPv6.
The APNIC Foundation
What is the APNIC Foundation? This is the charity organization of APNIC. APNIC Foundation was established in order to independently raise funds from other APNIC Member contributions. This was created in order to support and widen the internet development efforts within the Asia Pacific region.
Who Are the Partners of APNIC?
The group has lots of partners and other internet organizations which APNIC work closely with. These groups include the following:
The APNIC Membership Group: These include the following, Major Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the National Internet Registries or NIRs, and the Network Information Centres or the NICs.
Other Regional Internet Registries (RIRs): These include the North America RIRs or the ARIN, LACNIC which is the Latin America and the Caribbean RIR, The RIPE NCC which is for Europe, and Africa’s RIR the AFRINIC.
The Number Resource Organization: Together with the other Regional Internet Registries, APNIC is also a member of the NRO or the Number Resource Organization. The NRO exists in order to protect the unallocated number resource pool. It is also there to promote and protect the bottom-up policy and regulation development process and be the main point for input into the RIR system.
Other Leading Internet Groups: Other internet organizations include the IANA or the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, the Internet Corporation Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN, the IETF, which is short for Internet Engineering Task Force, the IEPG or Internet Engineering and Planning Group, and lastly the Internet Society or the ISOC. Aside from the groups and organizations mentioned, there are also other groups and organizations that are part of the many partners of the APNIC.
The AUNIC, which was Australia’s previous RIR was disbanded and is now under the responsibility of APNIC.
HISTORY of APNIC
The Asia Pacific Coordinating Committee for Intercontinental Research Networks (APCCIRN) and the Asia Pacific Engineering and Planning Group or the APEPG founded APNIC in 1992. APEPG and APCCIRN were eventually amalgamated and were renamed as the APNG or the Asia Pacific Network Group. Its primary goal why it was established is to e a pilot project to administer address space as defined by the RFC-1366. It was also created in order to encompass a wider brief, and that is, “To facilitate communication, business, and culture using Internet Technologies.”
A year later, the APNG found out that they were not able to provide and offer a formal umbrella or legal structure for APNIC. This led for the project to be concluded. However, the APNIC continued to exist independently under the authority of IANA as an Interim Project. At this point,, APNIC still do not have the legal rights, a membership, and a fee structure.
Two years after it was established, the inaugural meeting of APNIC was held in Bangkok, Thailand. This two-day forum was organized and run by volunteers, and everyone is free to attend the conference.
Donations were based depending on the size of the group or organization. The Voluntary donations ranged from US$1,500 for small to large which can go up to US$10,000. APNIC-001 defined the three member types, these are the ISP (Local IR), Enterprise, and the National. Businesses who want to buy IPv4 address may have experienced shortage during this time as the exhaustion of IPv4 is imminent.
In 1996, they saw a proper way to introduce a fee structure. APNIC also established the membership, and the holding of the first ever APRICOT conference. And in 1997, it was becoming really evident that the organization’s local environment in Japan was restricting its growth. As reported, the staff then was limited to just 4 to 5 members. Thus, the consulting firm KPMG was contracted and hired to look for an ideal location within the Asia Pacific region for their new headquarters.
Reasons like the stable infra, the low cost of living and operations, and the tax advantages for membership organizations were raised to KPMG. And because of these qualifications, Brisbane in Australia was selected to be the new APNIC headquarters. The relocation to the new place was completed between April and August 1998. They do this while maintaining continuous operation all throughout.
By 1999, the transfer to Brisbane was finally complete. It also saw the end of the Asia economic crunch. And so began the period of consolidation for the organization. This is also the period for sustained growth, policy development, and the creation of documentation and internal systems.
Since it was first established, APNIC has seen the highs and the lows, and now shows exponential growth. Today it has a membership of more than 7,700. And from a humble beginning, APNIC is steadily increasing in 56 economies across the region and the secretariat of about 88 staff members found in the Brisbane, Australia.
The 56 Economies of APNIC:
Afghanistan
American Samoa (USA)
Australia
Bangladesh
Bhutan
British Indian Ocean Territory (UK)
Brunei
Cambodia
People’s Republic of China
Christmas Island (AU)
Cocos (Keeling) Islands (AU)
Cook Island (NZ)
East Timor
Fiji
French Polynesia (France)
French Southern Territories (France)
Guan (USA)
Hong Kong (PRC)
Malaysia
Micronesia
Mongolia
Myanmar (Burma)
Nauru
Nepal
New Caledonia (France)
New Zealand
Niue (NZ)
Norfolk Island (AU)
Northern Marianas islands (USA)
Pakistan
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Republic of the Philippines
Pitcairn (UK)
Samoa Islands
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Taiwan (ROC)
Thailand
Tokelau (NZ)
Tonga
Tuvalu
Vanuatu
Vietnam
Wallis and Futuna Islands (France)
APNIC at first covered the following countries, Madagascar, Mauritius and the Seychelles. They were under APNIC until AFRINIC was finally established to serve Africa. Now those who want to buy IPv4 address from these countries can keep in touch with AFRINIC.