Netherlands Gets First Nationwide 'Internet of Things' (phys.org) 67
An anonymous reader writes: The Netherlands has become the first country in the world to implement a nationwide long-range (LoRa) network for the Internet of Things, says Dutch telecoms group KPN on Thursday. "As from today the KPN LoRa network is available throughout The Netherlands," KPN said in a statement. Phys.Org reports: "The rollout of a low data rate (LoRa) mobile communications network is critical to connect objects as many may not be able to link up with home or work Wi-Fi networks to gain Internet access. The LoRa network is complementary to KPN's networks for the 2G, 3G and 4G phones. KPN has already reached deals to connect some 1.5 million objects, a number which should steadily grow now that the LoRa network is available across the country. Tests are being carried out at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam -- one of Europe's busiest air hubs -- for baggage handling. Meanwhile in the Utrecht rail station an experiment is under way to allow LoRa to monitor rail switches."
acronym puns (Score:2)
I read that LoRa is phonetic pun on the local language for a word that means "all seeing eye" or "spy". And KPN sounds like the word for "creepy".
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I'm Dutch, and I would like to learn that word, I don't know it yet. To me LoRa sounds like a girl's name.
KPN, while sometimes creepy, like any big corporation, we pronounce as : Kah Pay En.
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I really hope you don't believe what you just wrote.
Let's say I have an IoT-enabled fridge. And let's say that I find its functionality useful. Say it lets me check the contents of the fridge using my smart phone when I'm on the go, so I can see if I need to buy milk and eggs on the way home. But let's also say that in order for this functionality to work I need to allow it to make HTTPS connections to the cloud.
Do you see where the problem arises? Because it uses HTTPS, and the functionality I want to use
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Because of how it uses HTTPS, I would be unable to block or filter the data it sends back! ... A firewall is NOT always the solution!
I think the point was that the firewall will quite efficiently block HTTPS traffic of your dick pics, which does seem to be the solution to your dick pics being sent places you don't want them to be sent. And even just the status of what's in your fridge, when you don't want it to be sent to the cloud for scanning by Google etc., can be blocked by the same firewall.
So yes, the firewall solves your concern about what information is being sent out about you quite well. I don't know what magic you think HTTP
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Re:Reasons why I don't like the Internet of Things (Score:4, Interesting)
This only works as long as not everybody is doing it. The moment that happens, the manufacturers will make the device broken unless you connect it to the internet all the time. The device will open one connection, only one: to the manufacturer. It'll be TLS encrypted and will use public key pinning. All the traffic the device will cause will go through that connection.
No firewall will help against that.
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I didn't say it wasn't connected to the internet.... I said it could be behind a firewall that controls what goes in and out.
Alternatively, you could put it on a local ip-range only subnet of your network, and have a transparent network-layer proxy which handles outgoing requests, and correctly routes any responses to them, but any actual incoming requests are discarded, behaving similarly to NAT.
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And what when the device simply refuses to function if there is no internet access? This is already the case for some "smart" meters that report the usage data in realtime.
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It doesn't matter if it uses a strong encryption if you know the protocol. Https, for example... instead of making https requests to outside, it can make https requests to a local machine, which because it was the destination machine as far as your device is concerned, would have access to the content of the message, and can, based on what that machine can know about the content, can direct the query as necessary to outside, if it is deemed appropriate. The local machine would then forward replies back t
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It totally does matter.
1) You give the fridge unfettered access to anything it wants.
or
2) You come home from work and your ice cream has melted and the milk's gone manky.
Those are the options when you have refrigeration as a service.
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And for what it's worth, if you control the gateway, it is always possible to make a machine behind it believe it has unfettered access to the internet if you know what the device is expecting to see. If you don't, then obviously you can't control it in the first place... and arguably, the device isn't even really yours, much like the smart meters in your home th
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But you don't, do you? Or nothing that required a subscription service would work for more than three minutes before somebody hacked it.
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The Internet of Things is creepy to the max and it sounds like it could be very invasive.
Yes thanks for sharing your personal thoughts with anonymous strangers on the internet.
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You posted this before. You're repeating yourself and not listening to any rebuttals.
This list above could be used for "Computers", or "Internet".
Internet of things just means things that are on the internet, and it runs the range from this sort of LoRa to bluetooth headsets to traffic lights to whatever.
What does this mean? (Score:2)
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LoRa is not just the fucking internet. It is a very low-power, long-range, wireless technology for very low bit-rate applications. The technology is open, and it uses unlicensed spectrum. That means that you can actually setup your own personal LoRa network and use the same devices on it as you would on this commercial network.
This very much unlike alternative technologies from other providers which try to lock you in using non-open technologies and requiring licensed spectrum to operate.
LoRa actually has t
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We have reality already and it includes widely used Internet of Things devices that showed up before anyone started calling them IoT. These are smart electric meters and smart grid monitors. But but but, someone will say it's not real IoT unless it's for useless home consumer devices.
LoRa Alliance is just another one of many "we want to get in on IoT too with yet another incompatible standard!" We've got tons of these alliances because everyone wants to be the leader. Cisco says it's the leader because
Re:What does this mean? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just the fucking internet
It's just the fucking internet if you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
Now if you feel the desire to educate yourself why not start with how well you will be posting on Slashdot on a network with a datarate of 0.3kbps to 50kbps. Then ask yourself why the country with the 6th highest average internet speed would roll out something so slow. Finally estimate how long you can surf the internet from a single AA battery.
Now when all of this sounds absurd to you maybe so will your idea that "It's just the fucking internet".
Keep in mind where the word "sabotage" originated. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe not for those of the intelligence gathering kind.
An encrypted network with shittowns of devices sending around shitloads of data could be hard to surveil.
Re:Keep in mind where the word "sabotage" originat (Score:4, Informative)
It comes from the French language, not Dutch. The Dutch have "klompen", not "sabot".
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Klompentage, that sounds like something else other than sabotage...
Near 0 bandwidth (Score:1)
Great if you want to dump a bit of sensor data, forget about running a telnet session over LoRa.
OMG they will watch me everywhere (Score:4, Interesting)
Except they won't. This is a technology not unlike Television and the Internet. The IoT revolution in the personal space is about gathering your personal data, but guess what, no one is going to roll out a nation wide network so that someone can read your thermostat.
This is a good example of practical IoT, not this bastardised thing about lightswitches and toasters which the unwashed are convinced is all there is about it. We're talking massive amounts of useful sensor data that can now be connected just as before ... except without SIM cards, without taking up resources on local mobile phone systems and without the incredible battery drain and big solar panels that current devices have.
Before everyone freaks out about what an invasion of privacy this is, remember that IoT is just a rebranded way of saying "sensor network" and all those fancy new technologies behind them are nothing more than reading those sensors in a way that consumes much less power than before.
Re:OMG they will watch me everywhere (Score:5, Insightful)
but guess what, no one is going to roll out a nation wide network so that someone can read your thermostat.
Nobody rolled out the Internet so that someone can read your thermostat, but amazingly, that is one of the many security and privacy issues that have come up once thermostats started being connected to the Internet. I.e., it isn't the REASON for the IoT network, but that doesn't mean there isn't somebody ready to try doing it just to prove they can.
and all those fancy new technologies behind them are nothing more than reading those sensors in a way that consumes much less power than before.
Oh, ok. So it cannot be an invasion of privacy because whatever is watching you uses much less power than before.
Right now, today, there are concerns about privacy and security when Internet connectable things show up in people's houses. There are easily predicted issues of both for more advanced devices as they begin to show up. I hate to tell you, but none of those issues will be resolved just because the devices will use a lot less power than they did before.
And the issues will not be made better when the device you bought yesterday could be blocked by adding it's MAC address at your home router, but tomorrow there will be a ubiquitous wireless national network that you cannot block carrying the data the device creates to places you don't want it to go.
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Nobody rolled out the Internet so that someone can read your thermostat, but amazingly, that is one of the many security and privacy issues that have come up once thermostats started being connected to the Internet.
You missed my point which is that a few home people buying into the idea that IoT means thermostat I can see a trend on and a lightswitch that I can control from my point does NOT mean that's what IoT is about and not at all related to this network.
The actual great technical possibilities of IoT and Sensor Networks that preceded it have ultimately been shat on by a few stupid companies releasing a few stupid toys to a few stupid consumers who happily share the temperature of their house with a third party f
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Interestingly one of the competitors to LoRa is 4G. I forget the exact details but there is a low bandwidth, low power channel for 4G that is designed for sensor networks and IoT, but uses the existing 4G base stations (presumably with firmware/hardware upgrades).
I think LoRa will win in the end due to the low cost of the hardware, but there is quite a bit of competition. The other big one is Sigfox.
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Is there money to be made there, or is it dwarfed by high-bandwidth prospects?
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It's profitable because they can have many thousands of low power sensors sending in tiny amounts of data, but on long term contracts with commercial grade support. The current "M2M" market with 2G and 3G modems is already huge and profitable, but LoRa could really eat into it because the radios are much cheaper and much lower power.
wireless sensor network (Score:2)
this is more about putting wireless sensors everywhere to report back rather than actually remotely controlling devices. if they began connecting controls for things like railroad switches, welp... predictable disasters would happen.
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Did anyone else misread this this way when they first saw the article?
Short answer: No
Long answer: It's only a 2 hour drive [google.nl].
Stoner Surveillance State. (Score:1)
not the first nationwide long range network IOT (Score:2)