Internet of Things: progress report on R&D work conducted by AFNIC

Saint Quentin en Yvelines, June 18th, 2010

AFNIC is today offering a video presentation of the R&D work it has been conducting on the Internet of Things and, in particular, on the Object Naming Service – ONS.

Internet of Things, RFID and ONS

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an extension of the current Internet where different objects can communicate directly or indirectly with devices which themselves are connected to the Internet. The use of barcodes or Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags allows such an extension.

The ONS (Object Naming Service) is the standard that enables Electronic Product Codes (EPCs) contained in RFID tags to be linked to an Internet service (for example a webpage). To achieve this, the ONS uses DNS (Domain Name System) software and infrastructure.

Federated ONS, a new model of governance

Through a structured R&D activity, AFNIC has been involved since 2007, in collaboration with GS1 France, in a project dealing with IoT and more particularly, with ONS, a technology related to its core business, the DNS. This project represents a major development for the ONS, addressing requirements expressed notably by some European political figures and major RFID and supply-chain players.

In 2009, AFNIC implemented a federated ONS platform reflecting the proposal it had published in 2008. This proposal itself was based on a document by GS1 Canada. It should be noted that all this work has been incorporated into a multi-partner project called WINGS, funded by the French Research Agency, ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche).

The aim of the federated ONS is to offer a new model of governance in which the ultimate responsibility for the management of the target ONS system no longer falls to one country or one organisation (single root), but is distributed evenly between several players (multi-root).

Watch the video

Download the movie: Federated Object Naming Service
(Vidéo format: MPEG2 - Size: 428 Mo - Approx. time: 9 min.)

URL: http://www.afnic.fr/data/divers/public/afnic-film-ons-2010-06-18.mpg

Flash and Ogg files with English subtitles as well as a short version (2 min.) will be soon available.

About AFNIC

(Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération )

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