It’s the start of a new adventure for Afnic and the technological university IMT Atlantique: on Thursday 30 January, the two partners officially launched a joint research chair dedicated to SCHC (Static Context Header Compression) technology. The goal is to explore the full potential of this compression technology so as to make Internet communication more efficient and less energy-intensive.
A key IoT technology, and much more
Initially developed by IMT Atlantique and since adopted as an international standard, SCHC compresses data to reduce the volume of exchanges on the constrained networks used by the IoT, while preserving their integrity. Although initially designed for the IoT, this technology offers particularly promising prospects in other areas where communication could be optimised, such as 5G, underwater or space communications, and even in the financial sector.
Which is why the chair plans to work on integrating SCHC into various communication protocols defined by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), with the aim of extending its use to other environments with very specific constraints. As Guillaume Moreau, head of Research and Innovation at IMT Atlantique, stated at the launch of the chair, SCHC has a real role to play in creating ever more resilient, sustainable and high-performance networks, whether in the field of the Internet of Things or the more global telecommunications landscape.
A chair to explore and innovate
The research chair will focus on several aspects of SCHC technology: promoting interoperability by facilitating communication between heterogeneous systems thanks to an open standard; enhancing communications security while optimising data transmission; increasing energy efficiency and reducing the network resources consumed; and promoting sustainability to extend the lifespan of devices thanks to optimised communications.
Afnic’s CEO Pierre Bonis affirmed that these goals can only be achieved through a collaborative approach, and emphasised the importance of uniting an ecosystem of players around the initiative, calling on businesses, academic institutions and research organisations to combine their expertise to meet the challenges of modern communications together. The chair is a clear demonstration of Afnic and IMT Atlantique’s commitment to innovation in favour of a more energy-efficient, sustainable and high-performance Internet.
About Afnic
Afnic is the acronym for Association Française pour le Nommage Internet en Coopération, the French Network Information Centre. The registry has been appointed by the French government to manage domain names under the .fr Top Level Domain. Afnic also manages the .re (Reunion Island), .pm (Saint-Pierre and Miquelon), .tf (French Southern and Antarctic Territories), .wf (Wallis and Futuna) and .yt (Mayotte) French Overseas TLDs.
In addition to managing French TLDs, Afnic’s role is part of a wider public interest mission, which is to contribute on a daily basis, thanks to the efforts of its teams and its members, to a secure and stable internet, open to innovation and in which the French internet community plays a leading role. As part of that mission, Afnic, a non-profit organization, has committed to devoting 11% of its Revenues from managing .fr Top Level Domain to actions of general interest, in particular by transferring €1.3 million each year to the Afnic Foundation for Digital Solidarity.
Afnic is also the back-end registry for the companies as well as local and regional authorities that have chosen to have their own TLD, such as .paris, .bzh, .alsace, .corsica, .mma, .ovh, .leclerc and .sncf.
Established in 1997 and based in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Afnic currently has nearly 90 employees.
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