Object Name Service (ONS) - A naming service for Internet objects

Contactless technologies, such as Near Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), have revolutionized a number of areas, including transport access, mobile payments and logistics. They are also helping to extend today's Internet, where objects can communicate, directly or indirectly, with electronic equipment that is itself connected to the network.

This vision of the "Internet of Things", initially developed by the Auto-ID laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has been taken up by GS1, the international organization behind the barcode and responsible for developing standards in the logistics sector. The EPCglobal subdivision is responsible for implementing RFID technology and standardizing it for the supply chain. The use of electronic tags in this field, combined with the Internet, makes it possible to improve product traceability and information retrieval, from manufacturer to consumer.

The ONS (Object Name Service) is an essential component of the "Internet of Things" infrastructure. It is based entirely on the DNS (Domain Name System), and enables the dissemination of information on the source of a product or the services available in connection with it. DNS is a public distributed database (Request For Comment, RFC), whose function is to find information, such as an IP (Internet Protocol) address, from a domain name. The key to accessing the ONS service is the product identifier: this can be, for example, an Electronic Product Code (EPC) stored in the RFID tag, or a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) represented by the classic 13-digit barcode.

In this two-part article, we first present the ONS principle and a few use cases. The second part is devoted to the political and technical issues involved, as well as to security aspects.