The AFNIC chooses anycast for the .fr ccTLD

The AFNIC wishes to equip itself with technologies that will reinforce its service level on the French country-code Top Level Domains it administrates.

In regards to these plans, the AFNIC has recently implemented new servers based on the anycast technology in order to increase the sturdiness as well as the quality of the DNS (Domain Name Service) of the administered zones, including .fr zone.

The anycast technology allows to free oneself from the geographical localization of sensitive servers. At the same time, while its geographical scope extends, it improves the DNS service quality by its response time and its sturdiness as it offers a better resistance to denial of service attacks (DoS).

To conduct this evolution, the AFNIC has hired a cooperation with Autonomica. This Swedish company, in charge of one of the Internet's root name servers, belongs to Netnod, operator for the "Swedish independent Internet exchange points".

Further information about...

Anycast: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast

Netnod and Autonomica: www.netnod.se

About the AFNIC

Non-profit organization, the AFNIC is in charge of the administrative and technical management of the .fr (France) and .re (Reunion Island) Internet domain names.
The AFNIC brings together public and private members: representatives from the French government, Internet users and Internet Service Providers (Registrars).
Further information.