Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC) is one of country NICs which assigns IP net- work numbers within the country. allocates do- main names under the country's 2-letter top-level domain name such as JP. registers those numbers or names into a database. and provides on-line in- formation services for the whole Internet as well as for the country. In this paper we describes 1) why and how we established JPNIC, that is, our background. moti- vation and purpose. 2) JPNIC's organization it- self and its funding model. 3) current status of JPNIC's operation. which includes assigning IP network numbers based on CIDR and introducing geographical domain names. 4) cooperation with APNIC and InterNIC. and 5) plans toward next step for more stable operation. We believe our experience will help other coun- tries or areas which are planning to establish its country NIC