Cisco Launches Alliance For the 'Internet of Things' 96
Yannis B. writes "This week, a group of leading technology vendors that includes Cisco, Sun, Ericsson, Atmel, Freescale, and embedded open source developers, founded the Internet Protocol for Smart Objects Alliance to promote the 'Internet of Things,' in which everyday objects such as thermometers, radiators, and light switches are given IP addresses and are connected to the Internet. Such IP-enabled 'smart objects' give rise to a wide range of applications, from energy-efficient homes and offices to factory equipment maintenance and hospital patient monitoring. For Slashdot readers who are interested in the underlying technology, a white paper written by well-known embedded open source developer Adam Dunkels and IETF ROLL working group chair JP Vasseur establishes the technical basis of the alliance (PDF)."
Just wait till the trolls get ahold of this stuff (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Just wait till the trolls get ahold of this stu (Score:5, Funny)
Toastse! [3 (-o-) {]
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The calls I'll receive in five years... (Score:2, Funny)
"Hi, this is Sandra from accounting- my pencil has a virus! It won't write words anymore and just keeps drawing a picture of a man doing... SOMETHING to his anus!"
Sigh...
"I'll be right there."
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IP addresses are a virtual commodity. if we run out of IPv4/IPv6 addresses, we'll simply create new address spaces as needed. that's not really a problem. it's like complaining about p2p file-sharers using too much bandwidth--these are infrastructure problems that aren't limited by physical resources. instead, this type of technological infrastructure naturally grows to meet demand.
it's not like we're facing an IP address shortage. AFAIK we haven't hit any technological hard limit regarding the maximum numb
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Yes THEORETICALLY it's not a problem, but in case you haven't noticed, the move to IPv6 hasn't exactly been lightning fast. The move to IPv7/IPv8 is unlikely to be faster.
Re:Wasting IP addresses (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not moving fast because there is, as of yet, no real need for it.
It's not as if we're down to our last can of IP addresses and after that, the entire world is going to collapse on us.
Necessity is the mother of invention. In this case, we projected that at one point necessity would dictate we need more IP addresses. So we invented. But that doesn't mean we need them yet.
When that time comes, it'll happen. It's good that we planned in advance and started putting the pieces in place. But until we really need it, calm the fuck down and relax. It'll happen when it happens and there's no need to be all doom and gloom about it.
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IPv6 provides an address for everyone that has ever lived. Remind me again why we would run out of addresses?
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Maybe because some day we might have more addresses than people who ever lived?
Or, even better - maybe because right now the minimum assigned space [apnic.net] is a /64? Which means we are allocating 1.8*10^19 (!!!) addresses, even if only one or two of them are actually going to be used.
The old "640K should be enough for anyone" argument isn't more valid now than it was 20 years ago...
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I wasn't discrediting IPv6. I was pointing out that IPv7 will never need to happen, ever. There are far more estimated stars in the universe than there are possible IPv6 addresses (I underestimated earlier).
PS: Wouldn't your statement be impossible? "All the people who ever lived" will have changed substantially in the future, and until we reach a live population that dwarfs the known dead population I don't see how we could possibly need more addresses than "all the people who ever lived" ever. "All th
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When you talk about IP addresses and people, you seem to think of the number of IP addresses necessary as being less than or equal to the number of people.
However, we already have more than 1 IP address for each person (look around you: desktop computer; PDA; laptop; router; IP phon
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However, we already have more than 1 IP address for each person (look around you: desktop computer; PDA; laptop; router; IP phone; IPTV; and so on). I believe that the number of items capable of network communication will increase in time - and one day it might greatly exceed the number of living persons.
I can see this happening, but I can't envision that we will ever exhaust all 2^128 IPv6 addresses in this century, if at all. We're far more likely to run out of MAC addresses first.
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But this doesn't mean that "we will never run out of addresses"...
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well, obviously security will be a major issue, and that's probably something this alliance ought to focus on.
and while i agree that some devices would probably be best left on a LAN, many others may be necessary to connect to the internet to be useful at all.
so you may not want WAN access to your home heating controls, but you may want your mountain cabin's thermostat to be viewable over the internet so that you can check to see when would be a good time to take that long needed vacation.
portable devices w
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I'm fine with this, if and only if they are using IPv6. Or behind a NAT + firewall.
In some ways I prefer the NAT wall. It's not at all clear that all these devices SHOULD be trusted, and I might well want to prevent them from network access outside of my local zone. Cisco routers, well, that's a different case, as often they naturally live outside the firewall...in that case what one wants to limit is their access to the internals.
I mean, I can think of all sorts of useful purposes that for this. The pr
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We will not run out of IPv6 addresses.
A 128bit addresses space really is enough for anyone. No, really.
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>A 128bit addresses space really is enough for anyone. No, really.
Until we setup an intergalactic, multiuniversal network.
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People, really - we actually have no idea how technology will evolve, and what uses IP will have in the future! We might have intelligent sensors the size of a dust mite, floating in the air and processing data. All using IP to communicate with one another. Or (as the article suggests) we might have an IP address in every common, everyday item. Combine that with the quite "relaxed" allocation procedure for IPv6 addresses, and you will realize that you should never
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I was specifically and deliberately alluding to that argument, making fun of it.
Do you have any idea how big an unsigned 128bit number can be? It's so large that you can't even get your head around it. It's so big that if you had that many atoms, the resulting object would weigh over 500 million tons.
The number is so big that I dare you to even try to make sense of it, let alone actually use it in a practical example of anything that is not on a quantum scale.
It's so big that it's nonsensical even in the co
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However, in time, both proved insufficient. So I believe that this is one field where you can never say "this should last forever".
[ Also, read the comment I linked to - when you're allocating 10^19 addresses even if the customer only needs 2, a 128-bit number suddenly seems much smaller... ]
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You don't seem to have a grasp of how large 128 bit is.
You can allocate 10^19 addresses to every man, woman and child every second for the next 65 thousand years before you'd run out of addresses
I can't even think of any reasonable number to divide 128bit by that results in a reasonable number. See, I divided your 10^19 into 128 bit and I was still left with a number so big that it could be allocated 6 billion times a second without running out in any time frame we'd ever care about (65 thousand years plus)
Still need cheaper Wi-fi chipsets for this to work (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody wants to run ethernet cable to their toaster... so I really think that making cheap Wi-fi chipsets is the answer here. Unfortunately it still costs at a very minimum $5+ to add wireless to something, so it's going to take a little while for a $2 light switch to get these.
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation. [nerdkits.com]
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That, or you could just use X11 or a similar power line protocol.
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X10 [wikipedia.org] might work better. ;)
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But eleven is so much more awesome!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_to_eleven
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While I understand your humor, there are a few limiting factors about using X10 -- very little bandwidth and the inability to see the other "leg" of the house voltage -- which means that in a typical home in the US, half the outlets can't communicate with the other half*. X10 is also limited to 256 devices.
Supposedly, there are also reliability problems with the protocol, but I've never noticed them.
I use X10 at home for a few purposes, and it works well for what I need it to do (switching on/off ligh
Re:Still need cheaper Wi-fi chipsets for this to w (Score:1)
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Broadband over power is already terrible, and it will only get worse as more and more people plug devices in.
Y'know those little filter plugs the DSL company gives you for your analog phones? Imagine doing the same to every AC-powered load in your house.
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Broadband over power lines != LAN over power wiring.
Re:Still need cheaper Wi-fi chipsets for this to w (Score:4, Insightful)
You can already use electrical cabling for networking [broadbandbuyer.co.uk], and given that appliances are all going to have to be connected to power anyway that seems a logical method. It could also simplify discovery and autoconfiguration.
Re:Still need cheaper Wi-fi chipsets for this to w (Score:4, Informative)
making cheap Wi-fi chipsets is the answer here
If you read the announcement, you'll find that the major benefit of using a layered architecture such as IP is the ability to use different physical media, depending on the application.
For short-range applications, there are technologies that are both cheaper and more power-efficient than wifi. Off the top of my head, there's Zigbee [wikipedia.org], Bluetooth [wikipedia.org] and probably lots of others.
And for even lower range applications, nothing beats the cost of an infra-red diode [wikipedia.org].
Re:Still need cheaper Wi-fi chipsets for this to w (Score:2)
I don't think its a question of being wifi or cat 5. the bigger question is why the hell for?
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I don't know about you, but I don't want my toaster or my light switch given a public IP address, or any connectivity to anything at all.
My toaster has a function - make toast. I push the thingy down, it heats bread. I don't want it suggesting different toast-related foodstuffs, phoning home to see if it's allowed to make my toast today or catching fire because some leet H4XX0R has found a way to break in and override the thermal cutoff.
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Just to bring you up to speed: pacemakers can already be accessed wirelessly, it's much more convenient than a wire sticking out of your chest. And it has already been hacked too [hackedgadgets.com].
Re:Still need cheaper Wi-fi chipsets for this to w (Score:1)
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My answer: ZigBee! [zigbee.org] They're mesh topology, so you don't have to have line-of-sight to the coordinator. They have interoperability as part of the ZigBee spec [zigbee.org] by using defined profiles [wikipedia.org].
These specific devices [digi.com] are essentially rs-232 devices with some A/D and digital I/O lines. The end device incarnation can sleep most of the time and awake to take samples. You can run a 'sleepy' endpoint on batteries for 1 yr+. With a decent antenna, you can get pretty far on 1-2mW, and if you've got power available, they sell
you KNOW the RIAA is salivating (Score:5, Insightful)
over the prospect of all DVRs and DVD players having an internet connection. How long before your DVD player has to phone home to see if you're allowed to watch that DVD?
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Blu-ray players already have an ethernet jack, that could plausibly be used for this in future if an (in)appropriate firmware upgrade was made.
Though I think the MPAA would care a lot more than the RIAA.
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I said it's present, not required. That could very easily change with a software upgrade (or downgrade, if you will).
I don't see who would be crazy enough to invest in a media playback format that requires always-on internet connectivity, but that's a separate issue entirely.
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Or worse, wait until your fridge has to phone up to find out if you've paid for the patents used in the food we eat every day...
There are some things which should just *not* be networked.
Or better yet, wait until it is the AC hooked up (as suggested in the summary) and then when someone decides that "this really important document must be sent priority" for some random thing and the network guy unplugs everything in the rack to send it over the T1... Right now we just loose the internet and the phones
I have been waiting for this... (Score:1, Redundant)
of course (IMHO) their only hope is to follow in the footsteps of most every other widely adopted specification and make freely available all the protocols and templates for sample implementations.
Cases in point: IBM PC, just about every programming language, PDF, ... to many to list.
For the widely adopted protocols that are not open, well they soon get hacked and become defacto open anyway (think RIAA, MPAA backed technologies).
Note: Did'nt RTFA
IETF ROLL? (Score:1)
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This is an IETF working group - Routing Over Low power and Lossy networks (ROLL). Like all IETF WG, it has a Charter [ietf.org] which you can read to find out more, and 4 outstanding Internet drafts (listed in the charter).
Got more IPV6? (Score:1)
Perhaps reporting on the kind of cookies being consumed in my smart cookie jar, and my toothbrush can email my dentist if it detects a filling from too many cookies? Maybe they can work together?
(Wireless, less space than normal cookie jar... lame)
Re:Got more IPV6? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've actually been waiting for both something like this and IPv6 for a long time, but I suspect the day when I can monitor the temperature of my fridge and oven as well as if they're powered on or not using SNMP is pretty far off.
/Mikael
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I would almost venture a guess of "Not in our lifetime.."
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You'd still most likely have a "gateway machine", only it would only be doing packet filtering and not address translation, and this is a good thing since it allows end-to-end connectivity, one of the things that the internet protocol was supposed to help provide.
/Mikael
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I have end to end with port forwarding. And what's more, most of my devices don't have any exposure to the big bad internets at large.
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You missed the OP's point. You can get isolation just as well with a public address. And you avoid having to set up port forwarding and for everything. We can go back to living in a world where port numbers correspond to services and addresses to computers. It's simpler and no less safe than address translation.
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Perhaps reporting on the kind of cookies being consumed in my smart cookie jar, and my toothbrush can email my dentist if it detects a filling from too many cookies? Maybe they can work together?
Just block cookies.
internet of what ? (Score:1)
ok nice I suspect that "web 2.0" or "web 3.0" or "web 1.5" had already been unm copyrighted.
So let's go for "things"...this sounds exactly like the result of a brain-thing-storming session made by execs who are, by far, not in touch with any of those "things".
A lot of information can be inferred from devices (Score:2)
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Alternatively you could use a firewall and a password.
Just sayin'.
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IP's may be a commidity... BUT (Score:1)
Power surges (Score:1, Interesting)
Just think about what happens when you get a power surge. In the past a surge on your phone line might have fried your modem. If you had your electronics plugged into a good surge suppressor they might have been spared from a surge on the power line.
As soon as you start putting digital circuits into everything then you will have to start worrying about everything failing. Between having sensors fail and having the embedded processors fail, you will end up with a whole lot of devices in your home that cos
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As soon as you start putting digital circuits into everything then you will have to start worrying about everything failing. Between having sensors fail and having the embedded processors fail, you will end up with a whole lot of devices in your home that cost much more and don't last nearly as long as the cheaper things they are meant to replace.
Your smart house had better be extremely smart so that it can save enough money to offset all of the higher expenses.
Gee, sounds like you hit on the reason this would happen in the first place. Not that they would make it try to "offset higher expenses" since that would kinda be the whole point...
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Just imagine they discover a security flaw in the protocol, you'd have to flash everything anyways... Unless they auto-flash... Perhaps this standard allowing bluetooth update of all devices you buy when you sink them into your bluetooth network?
thermometers, radiators, and light switches (Score:2)
What would giving individual devices public internet addresses add, other than a larger number of points of attack?
Smackdown: Internet of Things vs. Internet of Obje (Score:2, Interesting)
Good - It's been minutes since we had a pointless fight over standards.
A quick look at the Internet of Things docs yielded no mentions of the existing Internet of Objects effort. The MIT AutoID consortium, followed by the EPCGlobal organization, have defined an Object Name Service, ECPIS, and Discovery Services.
Defining an orthogonal standard will lead to our poor entities having existential angst over whether they are an "object" or a "thing".
Can someone help me? (Score:2)
I've heard these ideas for years but, even after RTFA, and the 6Lowpan [ietf.org] and ROLL [ietf.org] references, I'm still trying to understand the advantage of these proposals over the existing technology (like ZigBee [zigbee.org], among others). To be practical at all, the "Internet of Things" would have to be wireless, so there has to be an access point somewhere to the wired Internet. And because IP routing performs poorly in a multihop wireless network, the wireless network will have to use a different routing scheme, but still use t
and we *still* are not migrating to IPv6. (Score:2)
The only consolation is imagining Beowulf of "those Internet things".
Dear meatbags... (Score:2)
Dear meatbags,
I understand how busy your insignificant lives can be, running around in manufactured hurries and squandering this planet's resources on wasteful things tofurther your inefficient biologies. To assist you in enjoying what little remains of your lives, I present you with new technology. These inventions will help us all, by allowing every electronic device on the planet to be wired together so that wherever you go, you will always feel safe. Surrounded by the steely grasp of cold, unfeeling tec
12 years late and a few dollars short... (Score:1)
This seems like a rehash of Prof Yvo Desmedt [ucl.ac.uk]'s Things that Think [mit.edu] project from MIT's media lab [mit.edu].
They have been focusing on the security [springerlink.com] and privacy [slashdot.org] impact of networked / intelligent devices since the mid 90s.
Hopefully these guys will be included (there's no mention of them in the article) as they've already looked at a lot of the key problems and solutions.