Internet of Things

Module-1.1
 What Is IoT?
• IoT is a technology transition in which devices will allow us to sense and control the
physical world by making objects smarter and connecting them through an intelligent
network.
• GOAL: The basic premise and goal of IoT is to “connect the unconnected.” This means
that objects that are not currently joined to a computer network, namely the Internet, will be
connected so that they can communicate and interact with people and other objects.
• When objects and machines can be sensed and controlled remotely across a network, a
tighter integration between the physical world and computers is enabled.
• This allows for improvements in the areas of efficiency, accuracy, automation, and the
enablement of advanced applications.
 Emergence of IoT
• The age of IoT is often said to have started between the years 2008 and
2009. During this time period, the number of devices connected to the
Internet eclipsed the world’s population.
• The person credited with the creation of the term “Internet of Things” is
Kevin Ashton. While working for Procter & Gamble in 1999, Kevin used
this phrase to explain a new idea related to linking the company’s supply
chain to the Internet.
• Kevin has subsequently explained that IoT now involves the addition of
senses to computers. He was quoted as saying: “In the twentieth century,
computers were brains without senses—they only knew what we told them.”
 Emergence of IoT
• The evolution of the Internet can be categorized into four phases. Each of
these phases has had a profound impact on our society and our lives.
 Emergence of IoT
a. Connectivity (Digitize access): This phase connected people to email, web services, and
search so that information is easily accessed.
b. Networked Economy (Digitize business): This phase enabled e-commerce and supply
chain enhancements along with collaborative engagement to drive increased efficiency in
business processes.
c. Immersive Experiences (Digitize interactions): This phase extended the Internet
experience to encompass widespread video and social media while always being connected
through mobility. More and more applications are moved into the cloud.
d. Internet of Things (Digitize the world): This phase is adding connectivity to objects and
machines in the world around us to enable new services and experiences. It is connecting the
unconnected.
 Emergence of IoT
• Each of these evolutionary phases builds on the previous one. With each
subsequent phase, more value becomes available for businesses,
governments, and society in general.
• The original Internet intended for sending simple messages is now
connected with all sorts of “Things”. These things can be legacy devices,
modern-day computers, sensors, actuators, household appliances,
toys, clothes, shoes, vehicles, cameras, and anything which may benefit
a product by increasing its scientific value, accuracy, or even its cosmetic
value.
 Emergence of IoT
• Each second, the present-day Internet allows massively heterogeneous traffic
through it. This network traffic consists of images, videos, music, speech,
text, numbers, binary codes, machine status, banking messages, data from
sensors and actuators, healthcare data, data from vehicles, home automation
system status and control messages, military communications, and many
more.
• This huge variety of data is generated from a massive number of connected
devices, which may be directly connected to the Internet or connected
through gateway devices
 IoT and Digitization
• IoT and digitization are terms that are often used interchangeably, but there are key
differences to be aware of.
• At a high level, IoT focuses on connecting “things,” such as objects and machines, to a
computer network, such as the Internet
• Digitization, as defined in its simplest form, is the conversion of information into a digital
format. Digitization has been happening in one form or another for several decades.
• For example, the whole photography industry has been digitized. Pretty much everyone has
digital cameras these days, either standalone devices or built into their mobile phones.
Almost no one buys film and takes it to a retailer to get it developed. The digitization of
photography has completely changed our experience when it comes to capturing images.
 Emergence of IoT

• Fig: shows the global trend and projection for connected devices worldwide.
 Emergence of IoT
• IoT is an anytime, anywhere, and anything ( Figure) network of Internet-
connected physical devices or systems capable of sensing an environment
and affecting the sensed environment intelligently.
• IoT may be considered to be made up of connecting devices, machines, and
tools; these things are made up of sensors/actuators and processors, which
connect to the Internet through wireless technologies.
• Figure The three characteristic features—anytime, anywhere, and anything—highlight the robustness and
dynamic nature of IoT
IoT systems can be characterized by the following features :
• Associated architectures, which are also efficient and scalable.
• No ambiguity in naming and addressing.
• Massive number of constrained devices, sleeping nodes, mobile devices, and non-IP
devices.
• Intermittent and often unstable connectivity
The global IoT spending across various organizations and
industries and its subsequent projection until the year 2029
and The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the IoT
The IoT market share across various industries
market

• IoT is speculated to have achieved faster and higher technology acceptance

as compared to electricity and telephony.
 Evolution of IoT
• Today IoT is a result of a series of technological paradigm shifts over a few
decades. The technologies that laid the foundation of connected systems by
achieving easy integration to daily lives, popular public acceptance, and
massive benefits by using connected solutions can be considered as the
founding solutions for the development of IoT.
• ATM: ATMs or automated teller machines are cash distribution machines, which
are linked to a user’s bank account. ATMs dispense cash upon verification of the
identity of a user and their account through a specially coded card. The central
concept behind ATMs was the availability of financial transactions even when banks
were closed beyond their regular work hours. These ATMs were ubiquitous money
dispensers. The first ATM became operational and connected online for the first
time in 1974.
• Web: World Wide Web is a global information sharing and communication
platform. The Web became operational for the first time in 1991. Since then, it has
been massively responsible for the many revolutions in the field of computing and
communication.
• Smart Meters: The earliest smart meter was a power meter, which became
operational in early 2000. These power meters were capable of communicating
remotely with the power grid. They enabled remote monitoring of subscribers’
power usage and eased the process of billing and power allocation from grids
• Digital Locks: Digital locks can be considered as one of the earlier attempts at
connected home-automation systems. Present-day digital locks are so robust that
smartphones can be used to control them. Operations such as locking and
unlocking doors, changing key codes, including new members in the access lists, can
be easily performed, and that too remotely using smartphones.
• Connected Healthcare: Here, healthcare devices connect to hospitals, doctors, and
relatives to alert them of medical emergencies and take preventive measures. The
devices may be simple wearable appliances, monitoring just the heart rate and pulse
of the wearer, as well as regular medical devices and monitors in hospitals. The
connected nature of these systems makes the availability of medical records and test
results much faster, cheaper, and convenient for both patients as well as hospital
authorities.
• Connected Vehicles: Connected vehicles may communicate to the Internet or with
other vehicles, or even with sensors and actuators contained within it. These
vehicles self-diagnose themselves and alert owners about system failures.
• Smart Cities: This is a city-wide implementation of smart sensing, monitoring, and
actuation systems. The city-wide infrastructure communicating amongst themselves
enables unified and synchronized operations and information dissemination. Some
of the facilities which may benefit are parking, transportation, and others.
• Smart Dust: These are microscopic computers. Smaller than a grain of sand each,
they can be used in numerous beneficial ways, where regular computers cannot
operate. For example, smart dust can be sprayed to measure chemicals in the soil or
even to diagnose problems in the human body.
• Smart Factories: These factories can monitor plant processes, assembly lines,
distribution lines, and manage factory floors all on their own. The reduction in
mishaps due to human errors in judgment or unoptimized processes is drastically
reduced.
• UAVs: UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles have emerged as robust public- domain
solutions tasked with applications ranging from agriculture, surveys, surveillance,
deliveries, stock maintenance, asset management, and other tasks.
• The present-day IoT spans across various domains and applications. The
major highlight of this paradigm is its ability to function as a cross-domain
technology enabler. Multiple domains can be supported and operated upon
simultaneously over IoT-based platforms.
• Support for legacy technologies and standalone paradigms, along with
modern developments, makes IoT quite robust and economical for
commercial, industrial, as well as consumer applications.
• IoT is being used in vivid and diverse areas such as smart parking,
smartphone detection, traffic congestion, smart lighting, waste management,
smart roads, structural health, urban noise maps, river floods, water flow,
silos stock calculation, water leakages, radiation levels, explosive and
hazardous gases, perimeter access control, snow level monitoring, liquid
presence, forest fire detection, air pollution, smart grid, tank level,
photovoltaic installations, NFC (near-field communications) payments,
intelligent shopping applications, landslide and avalanche prevention, early
detection of earthquakes, supply chain control, smart product management,
and others.
The various technological interdependencies of IoT with other domains and
networking paradigms
 The interdependence and reach of IoT
• M2M: The M2M or the machine-to-machine paradigm signifies a system of
connected machines and devices, which can talk amongst themselves without
human intervention. The communication between the machines can be for updates
on machine status (stocks, health, power status, and others), collaborative task
completion, overall knowledge of the systems and the environment, and others.
• CPS: The CPS or the cyber physical system paradigm insinuates a closed control
loop—from sensing, processing, and finally to actuation—using a feedback
mechanism. CPS helps in maintaining the state of an environment through the
feedback control loop, which ensures that until the desired state is attained, the
system keeps on actuating and sensing. Humans have a simple supervisory role in
CPS-based systems; most of the ground-level operations are automated.
 The interdependence and reach of IoT
• IoE: The IoE paradigm is mainly concerned with minimizing and even reversing
the ill-effects of the permeation of Internet-based technologies on the
environment. The major focus areas of this paradigm include smart and sustainable
farming, sustainable and energy-efficient habitats, enhancing the energy efficiency
of systems and processes, and others. In brief, we can safely assume that any aspect
of IoT that concerns and affects the environment, falls under the purview of IoE.
• Industry 4.0: Industry 4.0 is commonly referred to as the fourth industrial
revolution pertaining to digitization in the manufacturing industry. This paradigm
strongly puts forward the concept of smart factories, where machines talk to one
another without much human involvement based on a framework of CPS and IoT.
The digitization and connectedness in Industry 4.0 translate to better resource and
workforce management, optimization of production time and resources, and better
upkeep and lifetimes of industrial systems.
 The interdependence and reach of IoT
• IoP: IoP is a new technological movement on the Internet which aims to
decentralize online social interactions, payments, transactions, and other tasks
while maintaining confidentiality and privacy of its user’s data. A famous site
for IoP states that as the introduction of the Bitcoin has severely limited the
power of banks and governments, the acceptance of IoP will limit the power
of corporations, governments, and their spy agencies.
 IoT versus M2M
• Machine to Machine : This is commonly known as Machine to machine communication.
It is a concept where two or more than two machines communicate with each other without
human interaction using a wired or wireless mechanism. M2M is an technology that helps
the devices to connect between devices without using internet. M2M communications offer
several applications such as security, tracking and tracing, manufacturing and facility
management.
• M2M is also named as Machine Type Communication (MTC) in 3GPP ( 3rd Generation
Partnership Project).
• M2M is communication could carried over mobile networks, for ex- GSM-GPRS, CDMA
EVDO Networks .
• In M2M communication, the role of mobile networks is largely confined to server as a
transport networks.
• M2M is only subset of IoT .
• .
 Basis of IoT M2M
Devices have objects that are responsible for
Intelligence Some degree of intelligence is observed in this.
decision making

The connection is via Network and using

Connection type used The connection is a point to point
various communication types.

The connection is via Network and using

Connection type used The connection is a point to point
various communication types.

Internet protocols are used such Traditional protocols and communication

Communication protocol used
as HTTP, FTP, and Telnet. technology

Data is shared between other applications that Data is shared with only the communicating
Data Sharing
are used to improve the end-user experience. parties.

Internet connection is required for

Internet Devices are not dependent on the Internet.
communication

Type of Communication It supports cloud communication It supports point-to-point communication.

Involves the usage of both Hardware and

Computer System Mostly hardware-based technology
Software.
 A large number of devices yet scope
Scope Limited Scope for devices.
is large.

Business 2 Business(B2B) and

Business Type used Business 2 Business (B2B)
Business 2 Consumer(B2C)

Open API support Supports Open API integrations. There is no support for Open APIs

It requires Generic commodity devices. Specialized device solutions.

Centric Information and service centric Communication and device centric.

Approach used Horizontal enabler approach Vertical system solution approach .

Devices/sensors, connectivity, data Device, area networks, gateway,

Components
processing, user interface Application server.

Smart wearables, Big Data and Cloud,

Examples Sensors, Data and Information, etc.
etc.
 IoT versus CPS
• A Cyber-Physical System (CPS) is a type of system that integrates physical
and computational components to monitor and control the physical
processes seamlessly.
• In other words, A cyber-physical system consists of a collection of
computing devices communicating with one another and interacting with the
physical world via sensors and actuators in a feedback loop.
• These systems combine the sensing, actuation, computation, and
communication capabilities, and leverage these to improve the overall
performance, safety, and reliability of the physical systems.
• Examples: CPS includes self-driving cars, The STARMAC is a small
quadrotor aircraft.
• Key Features of Cyber-Physical System
• In terms of the cyber-physical system, there
are some key features are classified as
• Reactive Computation
• Concurrency
• Feedback Control of the Physical World
• Real-Time Computation
• Safety-Critical Application
 Cyber-Physical System(CPS) Internet of things (IoT)

The CPS system is to monitor and controls physical IoT is create a network of interconnected devices to collect
processes in a seamless manner. and exchange data.

It is an integration of physics with cyber Components It contains all physical devices primarily created terms that
networked which is interconnected. are connected to the controls Sensors internet.

CPS systems are more complex compared then IoT devices. IoT systems are relatively simple.

CPS devices are designed to interact with physical processes IoT devices are primarily created compared to interact with
and control them. data-centric.

CPS is using Sensors and Actuators to work in the feedback

IoT is pure automation it does not need any external things.
loop.

It needs human intervention and human-to-computer

it doesn’t need any human assistance.
intervention.

Cyber + Physics(Physical devices(world) = CPS (Cyber Internet (connectivity) + Things (IoT devices) = IoT
Physical System) (internet of things)

Examples are smart homes, industrial control systems, and

Examples are Electronic vehicles and home appliances.
wearable devices.
 IoT versus WoT
• The Web of Things (WoT) paradigm enables access and control over IoT resources and
applications. These resources and applications are generally built using technologies such as
HTML 5.0, JavaScript, Ajax, PHP, and others. REST (representational state transfer) is one
of the key enablers of WoT. The use of RESTful principles and RESTful APIs (application
program interface) enables both developers and deployers to benefit from the recognition,
acceptance, and maturity of existing web technologies
• IoT is focused on creating networks comprising objects, things, people, systems, and
applications
• the scope of IoT applications is much broader; IoT also which includes non-IP-based
systems that are not accessible through the web.
 Connected Roadways
• IoT is going to allow self-driving vehicles to better interact with the transportation
system around them through bidirectional data exchanges while also providing
important data to the riders.
• Connected roadways is the term associated with both the driver and driverless cars
fully integrating with the surrounding transportation infrastructure.
• Automobiles produced with thousands of sensors, to measure everything from fuel
consumption to location to the entertainment your family is watching during the
ride. These sensors are becoming IP-enabled to allow easy communication with
other systems both inside and outside the car.
• In addition, new sensors and communication technologies are being developed to
allow vehicles to “talk” to other vehicles, traffic signals, school zones, and other
elements of the transportation infrastructure.
 Connected Roadways
• Connected roadways solutions focus on resolving three main transportation
challenges.
• Safety – Avoid accidents- IoT and enablement of connected vehicle technologies will
anticipated potential accidents thus preventing loss of life and damage to vehicles.
• Mobility – IoT helps to optimize the routing of vehicles, reducing the delays
• Environment – Connected vehicle environment applications will provide real-time
information to make “green” transportation choices.
• Connected roadways will bring many benefits to society. These benefits include
reduced traffic jams and urban congestion, decreased casualties and fatalities,
increased response time for emergency vehicles, and reduced vehicle emissions.
• IoT-connected roadways, a concept known as Intersection Movement Assist
(IMA) is possible. This application warns a driver (or triggers the
appropriate response in a self-driving car) when it is not safe to enter an
intersection due to a high probability of a collision.
• As cars continue to become more connected and capable of generating continuous data
streams related to location, performance, driver behavior, and much more, the data
generation potential of a single car is staggering. It is estimated that a fully connected
car will generate more than 25 gigabytes of data per hour, much of which will be sent
to the cloud.
Connected Factory
Smart Connected Buildings
 Convergence of IT and OT
• IT supports connections to the Internet along with related data and technology
systems and is focused on the secure flow of data across an organization.
• OT monitors and controls devices and processes on physical operational systems.
• The IT organization is responsible for the information systems of a business, such
as email, file and print services, databases, and so on.
• The OT is responsible for the devices and processes acting on industrial equipment,
such as factory machines, meters, actuators, electrical distribution automation
devices, SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems, and so on.
 Convergence of IT and OT
• With the rise of IoT and standards-based protocols, such as IPv6, the IT and OT
worlds are converging or, more accurately, OT is beginning to adopt the network
protocols, technology, transport, and methods of the IT organization, and the IT
organization is beginning to support the operational requirements used by OT.
• When IT and OT begin using the same networks, protocols, and processes, there
are clear economies of scale. Not only does convergence reduce the amount of
capital infrastructure needed but networks become easier to operate, and the
flexibility of open standards allows faster growth and adaptability to new
technologies.
 Convergence of IT and OT
• The overall benefit of IT and OT working together is a more efficient and
profitable business due to reduced downtime, lower costs through
economy of scale, reduced inventory, and improved delivery times.
• When IT/OT convergence is managed correctly, IoT becomes fully
supported by both groups.
• This provides a “best of both worlds” scenario, where solid industrial
control systems reside on an open, integrated, and secure technology
foundation.
IoT Challenges
IoT Challenges
IoT Challenges
Enabling IoT and the Complex Interdependence of Technologies
• We can divide the IoT paradigm into four planes: services, local connectivity,
global connectivity, and processing.
• The service plane is composed of two parts: 1) things or devices and 2) low-
power connectivity.
• The services offered in this layer are a combination of things and low- power
connectivity.
• The things may be wearables, computers, smartphones, household appliances, smart glasses,
factory machinery, vending machines, vehicles, UAVs, robots
• The immediate low-power connectivity, which is responsible for connecting the things in
local implementation, may be legacy protocols such as WiFi, Ethernet, or cellular.
• In contrast, modern-day technologies are mainly wireless and often programmable such as
Zigbee, RFID, Bluetooth, 6LoWPAN, LoRA, DASH, Insteon, and others.
• The local connectivity is responsible for distributing Internet access to
multiple local IoT deployments.
• This distribution may be on the basis of the physical placement of the
things, on the basis of the application domains, or even on the basis of
providers of services.
• Services such as address management, device management, security, sleep
scheduling, and others fall within the scope of this plane.
• The local connectivity plane falls under the purview of IoT management as
it directly deals with strategies to use/reuse addresses based on things and
applications.
• The modern-day “edge computing” paradigm is deployed in conjunction
with these first two planes: services and local connectivity.
 Edge computing
• Edge computing is a distributed
computing model that brings
computation and data storage
closer to the sources of data.
• More broadly, it refers to any
design that pushes computation
physically closer to a user, so as to
reduce the latency compared to
when an application runs on a
centralized data centre.
• Global connectivity plays a significant role in enabling IoT in the real sense by
allowing for worldwide implementations and connectivity between things, users,
controllers, and applications.
• This plane also falls under the purview of IoT management as it decides how
and when to store data, when to process it, when to forward it, and in which
form to forward it. The Web, data-centers, remote servers, Cloud, and others
make up this plane.
• The paradigm of “fog computing” lies between the planes of local connectivity
and global connectivity.
• It often serves to manage the load of global connectivity infrastructure by
offloading the computation nearer to the source of the data itself, which reduces
the traffic load on the global Internet.
Fog Computing
• The final plane of processing can be considered as a top-up of the basic IoT
networking framework.
• The continuous rise in the usefulness and penetration of IoT in various application
areas such as industries, transportation, healthcare, and others is the result of this
plane.
• The members in this plane may be termed as IoT tools, simply because they wring-
out useful and human-readable information from all the raw data that flows from
various IoT devices and deployments.
• The various sub-domains of this plane include intelligence, conversion, learning data patterns,
cognition -recognizing patterns and mapping it to already known patterns, algorithms, visualization,
and analysis.
• Various computing paradigms such as “big data”, “machine Learning”, and others,
fall within the scope of this domain.
 IoT Networking Components
• The components that come into play during the establishment of any IoT
network, into six types:
• IoT node,
• IoT router,
• IoT LAN,
• IoT WAN,
• IoT gateway, and
• IoT proxy.
IoT Networking Components
 IoT Networking Components
• IoT Node: These are the networking devices within an IoT LAN. Each of these devices is typically
made up of a sensor, a processor, and a radio, which communicates with the network infrastructure
(either within the LAN or outside it). The nodes may be connected to other nodes inside a LAN
directly or by means of a common gateway for that LAN. Connections outside the LAN are through
gateways and proxies.
• IoT Router: An I oT router is a piece of networking equipment that is primarily tasked with the
routing of packets between various entities in the IoT network; it keeps the traffic flowing correctly
within the network. A router can be repurposed as a gateway by enhancing its functionalities.
• IoT LAN: The local area network (LAN) enables local connectivity within the purview of a single
gateway. Typically, they consist of short-range connectivity technologies. IoT LANs may or may not
be connected to the Internet. Generally, they are localized within a building or an organization.
 IoT Networking Components
• IoT WAN: The wide area network (WAN) connects various network segments such as
LANs. They are typically organizationally and geographically wide, with their operational
range lying between a few kilometers to hundreds of kilometers. IoT WANs connect to the
Internet and enable Internet access to the segments they are connecting.
• IoT Gateway: An IoT gateway is simply a router connecting the IoT LAN to a WAN or the
Internet. Gateways can implement several LANs and WANs. Their primary task is to forward
packets between LANs and WANs, and the IP layer using only layer 3.
• IoT Proxy: Proxies actively lie on the application layer and performs application layer
functions between IoT nodes and other entities. Typically, application layer proxies are a
means of providing security to the network entities under it ; it helps to extend the addressing
range of its network.
 Addressing Strategies in IoT
Feature IPv4 IPv6
Developed IETF 1974 IETF 1998
Address length (bits) 32 128
No. of addresses 232 2128
Notation Dotted decimal Hexadecimal
Dynamic allocation of addresses DHCP DHCPv6, SLAAC
IPSec Optional Compulsary
Header size Variable Fixed
Header checksum Yes No
Header options Yes No
Broadcast addresses Yes No
Multicast addresses No Yes
Feature Focus on reliable transmission Focus on addressing

Table 4.1 lists the differences in features of IPv4 and IPv6

Addressing Strategies in IoT
 Addressing Strategies in IoT
The IPv6 addresses can be divided into seven separate address types
1. Global Unicast (GUA): These addresses are assigned to single IoT entities/ interfaces;
they enable the entities to transmit traffic to and from the Internet. In regular IoT
deployments, these addresses are assigned to gateways, proxies, or WANs.
2. Multicast: These addresses enable transmission of messages from a single networked
entity to multiple destination entities simultaneously.
3. Link Local (LL): The operational domain of these addresses are valid only within a
network segment such as LAN. These addresses may be repeated in other network
segments/LANs, but are unique within that single network segment.
4. Unique Local (ULA): Similar to LL addresses, ULA cannot be routed over the Internet.
These addresses may be repeated in other network segments/LANs, but are unique within
that single network segment.
 Addressing Strategies in IoT
5. Loopback: It is also known as the localhost address. Typically, these
addresses are used by developers and network testers for diagnostics and
system checks.
6. Unspecified: Here, all the bits in the IPv6 address are set to zero and the
destination address is not specified.
7. Solicited-node Multicast: It is a multicast address based on the IPv6
address of an IoT node or entity.
 Multihoming in IoT networks
• It is a network configuration in which a node/network connects to multiple
networks simultaneously for improved reliability.
• Network proxies are used to manage multiple IP addresses and map them to
LL addresses of IoT nodes in small deployments, where the allotment of
address prefixes is not possible.
• Other approaches for multihoming include the use of gateways for assigning
LL addresses to IoT nodes under the gateway’s operational purview.
 Address management classes
The addressing strategies in IoT may be broadly differentiated into
seven classes. These classes are as follows:
Class 1: The IoT nodes are not connected to any other interface
or the Internet except with themselves. This class can be
considered as an isolated class, where the communication
between IoT nodes is restricted within a LAN only.
The IoT nodes in this class are identified only by their link local
(LL) addresses, as shown in Figure (a). These LL addresses may be
repeated for other devices outside the purview of this network
class.
The communication among the nodes may be direct or through
other nodes (as in a mesh configuration).
 Address management classes
• Class 2: The class 1 configuration is mainly
utilized for enabling communication between
two or more IoT LANs or WANs through their
LAN gateways (which have a unique address
assigned to them). Generally, ULA is used for
addressing; however, in certain scenarios, GUA
may also be used. Figure (b) shows a class 2 IoT
network topology. L1–L5 are the LL addresses
of the locally unique IoT nodes within the
LAN; whereas U1 and U2 are the unique
addresses of the two gateways extending
communication to their LANs with the WAN.
 Address management classes
• Class 3: Figure 1(c) shows a class 3 IoT
network configuration, where the IoT
LAN is connected to an IoT proxy. The
proxy performs a host of functions
ranging from address allocation, address
management to providing security to the
network underneath it. In this class, the
IoT proxy only uses ULA (denoted as
Lx-Ux in the figure).
 Address management classes
• Class 4: In this class, the IoT proxy acts as a
gateway between the LAN and the Internet,
and provides GUA to the IoT nodes within
the LAN. A globally unique prefix is allotted
to this gateway, which it uses with the
individual device identifiers to extend global
Internet connectivity to the IoT nodes
themselves. This configuration is shown in
Figure (d). An important point to note in this
class is that the gateway also enables local
communication between the nodes without
the need for the packets to be routed through
the Internet.
 Address management classes
• Class 5: This class is functionally similar to
class 4. However, the main difference with
class 4 is that this class follows a star
topology with the gateway as the center of
the star. All the communication from the
IoT nodes under the gateway has to go
through the gateway, as shown in Figure (e).
A proxy beyond the gateway enables global
communication through the Internet. The
IoT nodes within a gateway’s operational
purview have the same GUA.
 Address management classes
• Class 6: The configuration of this class
is again similar to class 5. However, the
IoT nodes are all assigned unique global
addresses (GUA), which enables a point-
to-point communication network with
an Internet gateway. A class 6 IoT
network configuration is shown in
Figure (f). Typically, this class is very
selectively used for special purposes
 Address management classes
• Class 7: The class 7 configuration is
shown in Figure (g). Multiple gateways
may be present; the configuration is such
that the nodes should be reachable
through any of the gateways. Typically,
organizational IoT deployments follow
this class of configuration. The concept
of multihoming is important and
inherent to this class.
 Tunneling
• It is a networking protocol in which data from private networks can be
seamlessly streamed over a public network in the form of encapsulated
packets.
• This is mainly used for ensuring connectivity and security of data generated
from various technologies and protocols that may not be supported over the
public communication channel. Some of the best examples of tunneling are
virtual private networks (VPNs) and secure shell (SSH)
 Addressing during node mobility
• In modern- day IoT systems (which are low-power and have low form-
factor), the need for addressing of mobile nodes is extremely crucial to avoid
address clashes of addresses accommodating a large number of IoT nodes.
One of the following three strategies may be to for ensure portability of
addresses in the event of node mobility in IoT deployment.
• Global Prefix Changes
• Prefix Changes within WANs
• Remote Anchoring
 Global Prefix Changes
• A node from the left LAN moves to the LAN on the right.
The node undergoing movement is highlighted in the
figure. The nodes in the first LAN have the prefix A, which
changes to B under the domain of the new gateway
overseeing the operation of nodes in the new LAN.
• The device identifier, if allotted randomly, might face an
address clash.
• Addresses are assigned using DHCPv6(Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol)/ SLAAC(StateLess Address Auto
Configuration) in this scenario, it is always prudent to have
static node IP addresses to avoid a clash of addresses.
 Prefix Changes within WANs
• In case the WAN changes its
global prefix, the network entities
underneath it must be resilient to
change and function normally.
The address allocation is hence
delegated to entities such as
gateways and proxies, which make
use of ULAs to manage the
network within the WAN.
 Remote Anchoring
• This is applicable in certain cases which require
that the IoT node’s global addresses are
maintained and not affected by its mobility or
even the change in network prefixes.
• Although a bit expensive to implement, this
strategy of having a remote anchoring point from
which the IoT nodes obtain their global addresses
through tunneling ensures that the nodes are
resilient to changes and are quite stable. Even if
the node’s original network’s (LAN) prefix
changes from A to B, the node’s global address
remains immune to this change.