20140514 internet ofthings_feedhenry_opt

© Copyright FeedHenry Ltd. 2014

Internet of Things A Technical Overview

Dr Mícheál Ó Foghlú, CTO

May, 2014

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FeedHenry Platform

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A next-generation, cloud-based Mobile Application Platform for Enterprises leveraging the latest open technologies across all major mobile platforms.

© Copyright FeedHenry Ltd. 2014 © Copyright 2014, FeedHenry. All rights reserved.

TSSG Waterford Institute of Technology


Agenda

•  Context •  TSSG in WIT is a large R&D centre with many active projects, IoT •  FeedHenry is a spin-out from TSSG focused on mobile but applicable to IoT

•  Internet of Things Overview

•  Technical Review

•  Implications for CIOs

•  Summary


Internet of Things Overview •  The fixed Internet was big

•  The mobile Internet was bigger

•  The Internet of Things is bigger again

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Internet of Things Overview •  Internet of Things (IoT) also called the Internet of Everything (IoE)

•  Definition of Internet of Things – Ashton “If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things—using data they gathered without any help from us—we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their best.” [Ashton, 2009]

•  Definition of Internet of Things – Cisco “According to the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), IoT is simply the point in time when more “things or objects” were connected to the Internet than people.” [Evans, 2011] “Cisco IBSG estimates IoT was ‘born’ sometime between 2008 and 2009” [Evans, 2011]

•  Scale of Internet of Things “The Internet of Things (IoT), which excludes PCs, tablets and smartphones, will grow to 26 billion units installed in 2020 representing an almost 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion in 2009, according to Gartner, Inc.” [Gartner, 2013]

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Technical Review •  “Internet” = TCP/IP and requires IPv6 for IoT

•  “Internet” means the TCP/IP protocol suite, originally developed in the early 1970s and popularised in the 1990s with the rise of the web

•  IPv4 is what powers the majority of the Internet today, but it has fewer available addresses than the population of the planet, and we already have multiple devices

IPv4 space = 4.2949672 × 10^9

•  IPv6 is what will need to power the Internet of Things, it is a huge scale bigger than IPv4 and can comfortably allow all the world’s devices to communicate with each other

http://www.ipv6.ie/about IPv6 space = 3.4028236 × 10^38 “So, if all the IPv6 space was the size of earth, then you could fit IPv4 in 73.142 cubic centimetres. An iPod is 2.4″×4.1″×0.55″ = 5.41 cubic inches = 88.68 cubic centimetres. So, ball park, if all the IPv4 space would fit in an iPod, then all the IPv6 space is the size of the entire Earth.” [ICANN, 2007] 7


Technical Overview •  “of Things” = machine-to-machine without people

•  The assumption is that many sensors and normal commercial electronic and other equipment will be connected to a standardised world-wide computer network using TCP/IP standards and thus ease the automated gathering of data

•  To date most such implementations have not used the standard Internet technologies, and so inter-operability is severely hampered (e.g. home security equipment, distributed metering, …)

•  The real benefits accrue when the inert-operability is standardised so that a whole slew of non-predicted applications and uses can be generated, as has been done with generic mash-up using the Internet and web standards today

•  But the real value comes from linking Big Data to IoT – using the automated gathering of key information from distributed “things” to inform future decision making

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Technical Overview: Security

•  Security is a huge challenge for the Internet of Things

•  Ideally barriers would be low to allow devices to join networks and exchange information – but what if the wrong people can then access that information? A young couple settled in for the night, only to be startled awake by a disembodied voice screaming at their 10-month-old baby in her bedroom. … Sometime around midnight, parents Heather and Adam Schreck said a hacker accessed the Foscam Internet camera the couple was using as a baby monitor, and yelled out, “Wake up baby! Wake up baby!” Heather Schreck checked the camera through her smartphone and saw it panning around. When Adam bolted into the baby's room, it pivoted to face him and then started hurling a stream of epithets. [Lee, 2014]

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Technical Overview: Scope

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[Dolin, 2012] But the potential benefits outweigh the shorter term challenges, with the opportunity to radically change the richness of data used to make a whole series of decisions individually, locally and nationally.


Technical Overview: Protocols & Architecture

•  Protocols •  As with the Internet itself, the IoT often uses HTTP/HTTPS •  However this can be too heavy-weight, especially for sensors •  New lighter-weight TCP/IP protocols are emerging such as MQTT

(OASIS): “MQTT is a Client Server publish/subscribe messaging transport protocol. It is light weight, open, simple, and designed so as to be easy to implement. These characteristics make it ideal for use in many situations, including constrained environments such as for communication in Machine to Machine (M2M) and Internet Of Things (IoT) contexts where a small code footprint is required and/or network bandwidth is at a premium.”

•  Architecture •  Sometimes non-TCP/IP is used for sensors, and it’s the aggregation

layer that is truly Internet connected •  Personally, I believe the real IoT benefits will not emerge until it is IPv6

everywhere (potentially 6LoPAN, IPv6 optimised for sensors including Zigbee)

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CIO Implications •  By some definitions the IoT is already here, but in terms of mature

products to be deployed in the enterprise we still have a way to go

•  However, in the next 5 years we will have opportunities to deploy IoT style solutions

•  There are certain vertical sectors where IoT style solution have been deployed for some time (such as some parts of logistics and of retail)

•  Investment in open interoperable standards based solutions will be a much better long term investment than shorter term proprietary solutions, though the business case for the latter may look strong

•  Ideally use solutions that actually use the Internet (whether IPv4 or Ipv6) and for long term investment go for Ipv6 enabled solutions

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CIO Implications

•  The real value of all these devices generating data can only be realized if •  The data are channeled into a big data store •  Middleware can analyse this data and generate insights •  Insights can trigger software enabled actions

•  Thus the other big IT trends of the 2010s, mobile, big data and cloud, are also an important part of the Internet of Things

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Summary •  Internet of Things is real – the basic vision is one of connected devices

generating information without the need for direct human intervention (other than initial installation)

•  By some definitions it is already here, but in reality there is as yet no standardised way of doing these things, even the use of the “Internet” to connect such devices has yet to become standard

•  Thus, to date, it has been very hard to interconnect one system of devices (e.g. a home security system) with another (e.g. a networked thermostat)

•  But the promise is, as happened with the standardisation of the Internet and the web a technology suite for interconnecting computers, connected devices will lead to another scale of magnitude of interconnectedness that will dwarf “social” and “mobile” that are the current big trends

•  So CIOs should value systems that have potential to be interoperable 14


Internet of Things A Technical Overview

Dr Mícheál Ó Foghlú, CTO

[email protected] @mofoghlu

May, 2014

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Acknowledgements & References Kevin Ashton, Auto-ID Center MIT, Jun 2009 "That 'Internet of Things' Thing, in the real

world things matter more than ideas”http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?4986

Randy Benn, Cisco, Jan 2014, “Cisco’s Internet of Things” (Slideshare Slides) http://www.slideshare.net/CiscoPublicSector/cisco-internet-of-things-iot

Guthrie Dolin, Odopod, May 2012, “Internet of Things” (Slideshare Slides) http://www.slideshare.net/gdolin/connected-personalobjects-planningness2012

Kim Escherich, IBM, Nov 2012, “Internet of Things” (Slideshare Slides) http://www.slideshare.net/escherich/ibm-cio-forum-internet-of-things

Dave Evans, Cisco, Apr 2011, “The Internet of Things: How the Next Evolution of the Internet Is Changing Everything” (White Paper)http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/innov/IoT_IBSG_0411FINAL.pdf

Gartner, Dec 2013, “Gartner Says the Internet of Things Installed Base Will Grow to 26 Billion Units By 2020” (Press Release) http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2636073

ICANN, Jun 2009, “IPv6, the iPod and the Earth” https://blog.icann.org/2007/06/ipv6-the-ipod-and-the-earth/

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Acknowledgements & References Adriana Lee, ReadWriteWeb, Apr 2014, “Until We Fix Our Connected Homes, Hackers

Will Keep Screaming At Babies” http://readwrite.com/2014/04/30/connected-home-hackers-stop-yelling-at-babies-foscam

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