Internet of things 2.0, Summaries of Internet and Information Access

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Module 3: Chap 5

IP as the IoT

Network

Layer

• The Business Case for IP: This section discusses the advantages of IP from an IoT perspective and introduces the concepts of adoption and adaptation.

Explain the key advantages of IP suite

The Key Advantages of Internet Protocol

• One of the main differences between traditional information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) is the lifetime of the underlying technologies and products.
• An entire industrial workflow generally mandates smooth, incremental steps that evolve, with operations itself being the most time- and mission-critical factor for an organization.
• One way to guarantee multi-year lifetimes is to define a layered architecture such as the 30 - year-old IP architecture.
• It is able to maintain its operations for large numbers of devices and users, such as the 3 billion Internet users

The key advantages of the IP suite for the Internet of

Things are:

**1) Open and standards-based:

2. Versatile:
3. Ubiquitous:
4. Scalable
5. Manageable and highly secure:
6. Stable and resilient:
7. Consumers’ market adoption:
8. The innovation factor:**

2. Versatile:

• A large spectrum of access technologies is available to offer connectivity of “things” in the last mile.
• Additional protocols and technologies are also used to transport IoT data through backhaul links and in the data center.
• Even if physical and data link layers such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and cellular are widely adopted, the history of data communications demonstrates that no given wired or wireless technology fits all deployment criteria.
• communication technologies evolve at a pace faster than the expected 10 - to 20 - year lifetime of OT solutions. So, the layered IP architecture is well equipped to cope with any type of physical and data link layers.
• This makes IP ideal as a long-term investment because various protocols at these layers can be used in a deployment now and over time, without requiring changes to the whole solution architecture and data flow.

• 3 ) Ubiquitous:
• All recent operating system releases, from general-purpose computers and servers to lightweight embedded systems (TinyOS, Contiki, and so on), have an integrated dual (IPv 4 and IPv 6 ) IP stack that gets enhanced over time.
• In addition, IoT application protocols in many industrial OT solutions have been updated in recent years to run over IP.
• While these updates have mostly consisted of IPv 4 to this point, recent standardization efforts in several areas are adding IPv 6.
• In fact, IP is the most pervasive protocol when you look at what is supported across the various IoT solutions and industry verticals.

5) Manageable and highly secure:

• Communications infrastructure requires appropriate management and security capabilities for proper operations.
• One of the benefits that comes from 30 years of operational IP networks is the well-understood network management and security protocols, mechanisms, and toolsets that are widely available. Adopting IP network management also brings an operational business application to OT.
• Well-known network and security management tools are easily leveraged with an IP network layer.
• However, you should be aware that despite the secure nature of IP, real challenges exist in this area.
• The industry is challenged in securing constrained nodes, handling legacy OT protocols, and scaling operations

6) Stable and resilient:

• IP has been around for 30 years, and it is clear that IP is a workable solution.
• IP has a large and well-established knowledge base and, more importantly, it has been used for years in critical infrastructures, such as financial and defense networks.
• In addition, IP has been deployed for critical services, such as voice and video, which have already transitioned from closed environments to open IP standards.
• Finally, its stability and resiliency benefit from the large ecosystem of IT professionals who can help design, deploy, and operate IP- based solutions.

8) The innovation factor:

• The past two decades have largely established the adoption of IP as a factor for increased innovation.
• IP is the underlying protocol for applications ranging from file transfer and e-mail to the World Wide Web, e-commerce, social networking, mobility, and more.
• Even the recent computing evolution from PC to mobile and mainframes to cloud services are perfect demonstrations of the innovative ground enabled by IP.
• Innovations in IoT can also leverage an IP underpinning.

• The adoption of IP provides a solid foundation for the Internet of Things by allowing secured and manageable bidirectional data communication capabilities between all devices in a network.
• IP is a standards-based protocol that is ubiquitous, scalable, versatile, and stable.
• Network services such as naming , time distribution , traffic prioritization, isolation, and so on are well-known and developed techniques that can be leveraged with IP.
• From cloud, centralized, or distributed architectures , IP data flow can be developed and implemented according to business requirements

• Adaptation means application layered gateways (ALGs) must be implemented to ensure the translation between non-IP and IP layers.
• Adoption involves replacing all non-IP layers with their IP layer counterparts, simplifying the deployment model and operations.

• Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) applications are typical examples of vertical market deployments that operate both the IP adaptation model and the adoption model.
• Found at the core of many modern industries, SCADA is an automation control system for remote monitoring and control of equipment.
• Implementations that make use of IP adaptation have SCADA devices attached through serial interfaces to a gateway tunneling or translating the traffic.
• With the IP adoption model , SCADA devices are attached via Ethernet to switches and routers forwarding their IPv4 traffic.
• You should consider the following factors when trying to determine which model is best suited for last-mile connectivity:

1. Bidirectional versus unidirectional data flow:

• While bidirectional communications are generally expected , some last-mile technologies offer optimization for unidirectional **communication.
• IoT devices may only infrequently need to report a few bytes of data** to an application.
• These sorts of devices, particularly ones that communicate through LPWA technologies, include fire alarms sending alerts or daily test reports, electrical switches being pushed on or off, and water or gas meters sending weekly indexes.
• For these cases, it is not necessarily worth implementing a full IP stack.
• It requires the overall end-to-end architecture to solve potential drawbacks; for example, if there is only one-way communication to upload data to an application, then it is not possible to download new software or firmware to the devices.

2) Overhead for last-mile communications paths:

• IP adoption implies a layered architecture with a per-packet overhead that varies depending on the IP version.
• IPv4 has 20 bytes of header at a minimum, and IPv6 has 40 bytes at the IP network layer. For the IP transport layer , UDP has 8 bytes of header overhead, while TCP has a minimum of 20 bytes.
• If the data to be forwarded by a device is infrequent and only a few bytes , you can potentially have more header overhead than device data —again, particularly in the case of LPWA technologies.
• Consequently, you need to decide whether the IP adoption model is necessary and, if it is, how it can be optimized.
• This same consideration applies to control plane traffic that is run over IP for low-bandwidth, last-mile links.