Introduction to IoT –Part 2

Dr. Arpita Bhargava

IoT resulting in Address Crunch
• Estimated 20-50 billion devices by 2018.
• Reason is the integration of existing devices, smart devices as well as
constrained nodes in a singular framework.
• Integeration of various connectivity features such as cellular, Wifi,
ethernet with the upcoming ones such as Bluetooth Low energy,
DASH 7 , Insteon, IEEE 802.15.4, etc.
• The ITU vision is approaching reality as the present day networked
devices have outnumbered humans on earth
Connectivity technologies

Local Short range Communication, May or may not connect to

IoT LANS
internet, Building or Organization wide

IoT WANs Connection of various network segments, Organizationally and

Geographically wide, Connects to the internet

IoT Node Connected to other nods inside a LAN via the IoT LAN, may be
sometimes connected to the internet through a WAN directly.

A router connecting the IoT LAN to a WAN to the internet,

IoT Gateways Can implement several LAN and WAN, Forwards packet
between LAN and WAN on the IP layer

IoT Proxy Performs active application layer functions between IoT nodes
and other entities
IoT Network Configurations

Node
Preliminaries
• Some of the IoT network configurations restricted to local areas analogous
to normal LANs, WANs and proxy are shown in the previous figures.
• The nodes having L: local link address or LU are locally uniqu.
• Nodes within the jurisdiction have addresses that are valid within the
gateway’s domain only.
• The same address may be repeated in the domain of another gateway. The
gateway has unique address network prefix, which can be used to identify
them globally.
• The strategy saves a lot of unnecessary address wastage. Although the
nodes have to communicate to the internet via the gateway
Gateway Prefix Allotment
• One of the strategies of address conservation in
IoT is to use local addresses which exists
uniquely within the domain of the gateway.
These are represented by the circles
• The network connected to the internet has
routers with their set of addresses and ranges.
• These routers have multiple gateways
connected to them, which can forward packets
from the nodes to the internet, only via these
routers. These routers assign prefixes to the the
gateways under them, so that the gateways can
be identified with them.
Impact of mobility on Addressing
• The network prefix changes from 1 to 2
due to movement, making the IoT LAN
safe from changes due to movements
• IoT gateway WAN address changes
without changes in LAN address. This is
achieved using ULA.
• The gateways assigned with prefix , which are attached to the remote
anchor point by using various protocols such as mobile IPv6, and are
immune to changes of network prefixes.
• This is achieved using LU. The address of the nodes within the gateways
remain unchanged as the gateways provide them with locally unique
address and the change in gateway’s network prefix doesn’t affect them.
• Sometimes, there is a need for the nodes to communicate directly to the
internet. This is achieved by tunnelling, where the nodes communicate to a
remote anchor point instead of channleing their packets through the router
which is achieved by using tunnelling protocols such as IKEv2: internet key
exchange version 2.
Gateways
• IoT gateways with or without proxies responsible mainly for:
• Internet connectivity
• IoT LAN intra-connectivity
• Upstream address prefixes are obtained using mechanisms like
DHCPv6 and delegated to the nodes using SLAAC (stateless
addressing)
• LU addresses are maintained independently of globally routable
addresses, in cases were internal address stability is of prime concern.
• Despite providing address stability, LU cannot communicate directly
with the internet or the upper layers, which is solved by
implementing an application layer proxy.
• Application layer proxies may be additionally configured to process
data , rather then just passing it.
• In nodes with no support for computationally intensive tasks, IoT
proxy gathers data sent to the link-local multicasr address and routes
them globally.
• Presently, the internet is mainly Ipv4 based with little or no IPv6
uplink facilities or support.
• Due to the lack of universal transition solutions to IPv6, lots of an un-
optimized solutions are being used for IoT deployments.
• These makeshift solutions mainly address:
❖ IPv6 to IPv4 translation
❖ IPv6 tunnelling over Ipv4
❖ Application layer proxies (E.g. data relaying)
Multi-homing
• A node/network connected to a multiple networks for improved
reliability.
• In cases of small IoT LANS, where allotment of address prefix is not
feasible and possible, a proxy based approach is used to manage
multiple IP addresses and map them to link local addresses.
• In another gateway based approach is used for assigning link local
addresses to the nodes under it.
• Providing Source addressing, destination addreses and the routing
information to the multi-homed nodes is the real challenge in multi-
homing networks.
• Inn case of destination and source addresses originate from the same
prefix , routing between the gateways can be employed for IoT
gateway selection.
• Presently, IEFT is still trying to standardize this issue.
IPv4 vs IPv6
IPv4 IPv6
Developed IETF 1974 IEF 1198
Length(bits) 32 128
Number of Addresses 2^32 2^128
Notations Dotted Decimel Hexa Decimel
Dynamic Allocation of addresses DHCP SLAAC/DHCPOv6
IPSec Optional Compulsory
IPv4 vs IPv6
IPv4 IPv6
Header Size Variable Fixed
Header Checksum Yes No
Header Options Yes No
Broadcast Addresses Yes NO
Multicast Addreses No Yes
IPv4 Header Format
IPv6 Header Format
• IPv6 header structure more
simpler as it is mainly focused
on the addressing part of the
source and destination.
• It is concerned more with
addressing than with the
reliability of data delievery.