CSE-6262: Internet of Things

Chapter 5
IP as The IoT Network Layer

Muhammad Kamal Hossen

Associate Professor
Dept. of CSE, CUET
Email: [email protected]
Outline
2

⚫ This chapter includes..

 The Business Case for IP

 The Need for Optimization

 Optimizing IP for IoT

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The Business Case for IP
3

• Data flowing from or to “things” is consumed, controlled,

or monitored by data center servers either in the cloud or in
locations that may be distributed or centralized.
• Dedicated applications are then run over virtualized or traditional
operating systems or on network edge platforms.
• These lightweight applications communicate with the data center
servers.
• Therefore, the system solutions combining various physical
and data link layers call for an architectural approach with a
common layer(s) independent from the lower (connectivity)
and/or upper (application) layers.
• This is how and why the Internet Protocol (IP) suite
started playing a key architectural role in the early 1990s.
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The Key Advantages of Internet Protocol
4

• One of the main differences between traditional information

technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) is the
lifetime of the underlying technologies and products.

• One way to guarantee multi-year lifetimes is to define a

layered architecture such as the 30-year-old IP
architecture.

• IP has largely demonstrated its ability to integrate small and

large evolutions.

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⚫ The key advantages of the IP suite for the Internet of

Things are as follows:
o Open and standards-based
o Versatile
o Ubiquitous
o Scalable
o Manageable and highly secure
o Stable and Resilient
o Consumer’s Market Adoption
o The innovation factor
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 Open and standards-based

 Operational technologies have often been delivered as
turnkey features by vendors who may have optimized the
communications through closed and proprietary networking
solutions.

 The Internet of Things creates a new paradigm in which

devices, applications, and users can leverage a large set of
devices and functionalities while guaranteeing inter
changeability and interoperability, security, and management.

 This calls for implementation, validation, and deployment of

open, standards-based solutions.
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 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.

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 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
(IPv4 and IPv6) IP stack that gets enhanced over time.

 IoT application protocols in many industrial OT solutions

have been updated in recent years to run over IP.

 In fact, IP is the most pervasive protocol which is

supported across the various IoT solutions and industry
verticals.
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 Scalable
 As the common protocol of the Internet, IP has been
massively deployed and tested for robust scalability.

 Of course, adding huge numbers of “things” to private and

public infrastructures may require optimizations and
design rules specific to the new devices.

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 Manageable and highly secure

 Communications infrastructure requires appropriate
management and security capabilities for proper
operations.
 Well known network and security management tools are
easily leveraged with an IP network layer.

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 Stable and Resilient

 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.

 Its stability and resiliency benefit from the large ecosystem

of IT professionals who can help design, deploy, and
operate IP-based solutions.

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 Consumer’s market adoption

 When developing IoT solutions and products targeting the
consumer market, vendors know that consumers’ access to
applications and devices will occur predominantly over
broadband and mobile wireless infrastructure.

 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.

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 The Innovation factor

 The past two decades have largely established the adoption
of IP as a factor for increased innovation.

 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.

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Adoption or Adaptation of the Internet
Protocol 14

• The implementation of IP in data center, cloud services, and

operation centers hosting IoT applications may seem
obvious, but the adoption of IP in the last mile is more
complicated and often makes running IP end-to-end more
difficult.

• Multiprotocol routers were needed to handle this

proliferation of network layer protocols.

• The use of numerous network layer protocols in addition to

IP is often a point of contention between computer
networking experts.

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• Typically, one of two models, adaptation or adoption, is

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

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IP Adaptation and Adoption applied to IoT last mile

connectivity
• In the industrial and manufacturing sector, there has been a move
toward IP adoption. Solutions and product lifecycles in this
space are spread over 10+ years, and many protocols
have been developed for serial communications.

• While IP and Ethernet support were not specified in the initial

versions, more recent specifications for these
serial communications protocols integrate Ethernet and IPv4.

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• 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.

• With the IP adoption model, SCADA devices are attached

via
Ethernet to switches and routers forwarding their IPv4 traffic.

• Another example is a ZigBee solution that runs a non-IP stack

between devices and a ZigBee gateway that forwards traffic to
an application server.

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The Need for Optimization
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• There lot of challenges in building the IoT solutions based on IP.

• In addition to coping with the integration of non-IP devices,

we may need to deal with the limits at the device and network
levels that IoT often imposes.

• Therefore, optimizations are needed at various layers of the

IP stack to handle the restrictions that are present in IoT
networks.

• Let us see why optimization is necessary in IP based

IoT solutions:
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Constrained Nodes

• IoT is a platform, where different classes of devices coexist.

• Depending on its functions in a network, a “thing”

architecture may or may not offer similar characteristics
compared to a generic PC or server in an IT environment.

• IoT constrained nodes can be classified as follows:

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 Devices that are very communicate infrequently to

transmit a few bytes, and may have limited security and
management capabilities
 This drives the need for the IP adaptation model, where
nodes communicate through gateways and proxies.
 Devices with enough power and capacities to implement a
stripped-down IP stack or non-IP stack
 In this case, you may implement eitheran optimized
IP stack and directly communicate with application servers
(adoption model) or go for an IP or non-IP stack and
communicate through gateways and proxies (adaptation
model).
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 Devices that are similar to generic PCs in terms of

computing and power resources but have constrained
networking capacities, such as bandwidth

 These nodes usually implement a full IP stack (adoption

model), but network design and application behaviors
must cope with the bandwidth constraints.

 The costs of computing power, memory, storage resources,

and power consumption are generally decreasing. At the
same time, networking technologies continue to improve
and offer more bandwidth and reliability.
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Constrained Networks
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• In the early years of the Internet, network bandwidth capacity

was restrained due to technical limitations.
• A constrained network can have high latency and a high
potential for packet loss.
• Constrained networks have unique characteristics and
requirements. In contrast with typical IP networks, where
highly stable and fast links are available, constrained
networks are limited by low-power, low-bandwidth links.
• Finally, we have to consider the power consumption in
battery-powered nodes. Any failure or verbose control plane
protocol may reduce lifetime of the batteries.
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IP Versions
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• Today, both versions of IP run over the Internet, but most traffic is
still IPv4 based.
• The following are some of the main factors applicable to IPv4 and
IPv6 support in an IoT solution:
 Application Protocol
 IoT devices implementing Ethernet or Wi-Fi interfaces can
communicate over both IPv4 and IPv6, but the application protocol
may dictate the choice of the IP version.
 E.g, SCADA protocols such as DNP3/IP (IEEE 1815), Modbus TCP,
or the IEC 60870-5-104 standards are specified only for IPv4.
 For IoT devices with application protocols defined by the IETF, such as
HTTP/HTTPS, CoAP, MQTT, and XMPP, both IP versions are
supported.
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4
 Cellular Provider and Technology
 IoT devices with cellular modems are dependent on the
generation of the cellular technology as well as the data
services offered by the provider.
 For the first three generations of data services - GPRS,
Edge, and 3G-IPv4 is the base protocol version.
 Consequently, if IPv6 is used with these generations, it
must be tunneled over IPv4.
 On 4G/LTE networks, data services can use IPv4 or IPv6
as a base protocol, depending on the provider.

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 Serial Communications
 Many legacy devices in certain industries, such as
manufacturing and utilities, communicate through serial
lines.
 To make this work nowadays, you connect the serial port of
the legacy device to a nearby serial port on a piece of
communications equipment, typically a router.
 This local router then forwards the serial traffic over IP to
the central server for processing.

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 IPv6 Adaptation Layer

 IPv6-only adaptation layers for some physical and data
link layers for recently standardized IoT protocols
support only IPv6.
 Newer technologies, such as IEEE 802.15.4 (Wireless
Personal Area Network), IEEE 1901.2, and ITUG.9903
(Narrowband Power Line Communications) only have an
IPv6 adaptation layer specified.
 This means that any device implementing a technology that
requires an IPv6 adaptation layer must communicate over
an IPv6-only sub-network.
 This is reinforced by the IETF routing protocol for LLNs,
RPL, which is IPv6 only.
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Optimizing IP for IoT
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• While the Internet Protocol is key for a successful Internet of

Things, constrained nodes and constrained networks
mandate optimization at various layers and on multiple
protocols of the IP architecture.

• Figure 5.1 highlights the TCP/IP layers where optimization is

applied.

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Figure 5.1 : Optimizing IP for IoT Using an Adaptation

Layer
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From 6LoWPAN to 6Lo

• In the IP architecture, the transport of IP packets over any given

Layer 1 (PHY) and Layer 2 (MAC) protocol must be defined
and documented.

• The model for packaging IP into lower-layer protocols is often

referred to as an adaptation layer.

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• The main examples of adaptation layers optimized for constrained

nodes or “things” are the ones under the 6LoWPAN
working group and its successor, the 6Lo working group.

• The initial focus of the 6LoWPAN working group was to

optimize the transmission of IPv6 packets over
constrained networks such as IEEE 802.15.4.

• Figure 5.2 shows an example of an IoT protocol stack using the

6LoWPAN adaptation layer beside the well-known IP protocol
stack for reference.

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Figure 5.2: Comparison of an IoT Protocol Stack Utilizing 6LoWPAN and an IP Protocol
Stack
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• The 6LoWPAN working group defines frame headers for the

capabilities of header compression, fragmentation, and
mesh addressing.
• These headers can be stacked in the adaptation layer to keep these
concepts separate while enforcing a structured method
for expressing each capability.
• Depending on the implementation, all, none, or any
combination of these capabilities and their corresponding
headers can be enabled.
• Figure 5.3 shows examples of typical 6LoWPAN header stacks.
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Figure 5.3: 6LoWPAN Header Stacks

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6Lo Working Group
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 The charter of the 6Lo working group, now called the IPv6 over
Networks of Resource-Constrained Nodes, is to facilitate the IPv6
connectivity over constrained-node networks.
 In particular, this working group is focused on the following:
 IPv6-over-foo adaptation layer specifications using 6LoWPAN
technologies (RFC4944, RFC6282, RFC6775) for link layer
technologies. For example, this includes:
• IPv6 over Bluetooth Low Energy
• Transmission of IPv6 packets over near-field communication
• IPv6 over 802.11ah
• Transmission of IPv6 packets over DECT Ultra Low Energy
• Transmission of IPv6 packets on WIA-PA (Wireless Networks for
Industrial Automation–Process Automation)
• Transmission of IPv6 over Master Slave/Token Passing (MS/TP).
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 Information and data models such as MIB modules

 Optimizations that are applicable to more than one adaptation
layer specification
 Informational and maintenance publications needed for the
IETF specifications in this area

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Thanks!

Figures and slide materials are taken from the following sources:
1. David Hanes et al., “IoT Fundamentals: Networking Technologies, Protocols,
and Use Cases for the Internet of Things”, 1st Edition, 2018, Pearson India.

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