Startup of Commercial Internet Excahnge Service "JPNAP Osaka"

Startup of Commercial Internet Exchange Service "JPNAP Osaka"

INTERNET MULTIFEED CO. (MFEED; Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Koichi Suzuki), providing the distributed Internet exchange (IX) service in Tokyo called JPNAP[1], announced today that it will be offering the IX service in Osaka later this year.

Internet traffic in Japan tends to be heavily weighted toward Tokyo, as users from all over Japan access many information sources in the Tokyo area. Accordingly, most of the interexchange connections among ISPs and ICPs take place in Tokyo, and this is where the IX facilities interconnecting providers are concentrated. There is increasing awareness, however, of the need to alleviate this excessive concentration. This is especially true as carriers rush to put in place broadband access networks, leading to exponential growth in Internet traffic and boosting the status of the Internet as a vital social infrastructure.

MFEED has devoted itself to being a pioneering provider of the core functions supporting the Internet, based on its commitment to promoting the vigorous and sound growth of the Internet. In light of the above situation, the company has decided to provide a national-class commercial IX service in Osaka as well, tentatively to be called JPNAP Osaka. The new IX service is seen as a structurally necessary core function for the near-future IP backbone network, which will improve the stability of the Internet as a whole and be able to handle new traffic patterns.

1. Overview of JPNAP Osaka

MFEED will provide an IX service in Dojima of Osaka Prefecture as a full-scale commercial IX service for Western Japan with the same high reliability, quality, and scalability as the JPNAP provided now in Otemachi, Tokyo.

JPNAP Osaka, in addition to providing interexchange services for ISPs and ICPs in Kansai area and the rest of the Western Japan, will also be capable of improving network redundancy by serving as an alternative IX to those in Tokyo.

Moreover, connecting both JPNAP Tokyo and Osaka will make change the network topology in Japan, from exchanging traffic only in Tokyo to "hot potato routing[2]" involving both Tokyo and Osaka.

2. Schedule

MFEED plans to begin trial service in autumn and to start commercial service later this year. Providers anticipating use of JPNAP Osaka include @nifty. FENICS, BIGLOBE, IIJ, InfoSphere, and OCN.

3. Current service (JPNAP Tokyo)

Currently MFEED provides distributed IX service from two locations in the Tokyo metropolitan area, the NTT Otemachi Building and the Tokyo Sankei Building. Already more than a dozen domestic ISPs and ICPs are connected to the service, which is expected to reach 30 providers within the first year of operation.

Providers wishing to use the IX service can select connection points in either building. At either point, they are able to exchange traffic with all the networks connecting to JPNAP. MFEED is also planning to provide commercial IX service using all-optical communication infrastructure in the Tokyo area in 2002.

For more information on JPNAP please visit the following Web site:

URL: http://www.mfeed.co.jp/english/jpnap-tokyo/index.html

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For more information contact:
INTERNET MULTIFEED CO. Marketing Dept.
TEL: 03-3282-1010
FAX: 03-3282-1020
E-mail: info@mfeed.co.jp


  1. "JPNAP"
    JPNAP (pronounced jay-pee-nap): derived from "JaPan Network Access Point."

  2. "Hot potato routing"
    At interexchange points connecting multiple ISPs having their own networks, an ISP passing data from its own customers to those of another ISP uses the interexchange point that results in the shortest path within its own network.
    Since the receiving ISP is able to choose the optimum route in its own network, the result is the shortest route for sending data between users (e.g., data transferred between Osaka users is confined to the Osaka area). In these and other ways, communication is optimized from an overall standpoint.