Introduction to Internet of Things (IOT) 21CS735

Module-1
Emergence of IoT
1.1Introduction
The modern-day advent of network-connected devices has given rise to the popular paradigm
of the Internet of Things (IoT). Each second, the present-day Internet allows massively
heterogeneous traffic through it. This network traffic consists of images, videos, music,
speech, text, numbers, binary codes, machine status, banking messages, data from sensors
and actuators, healthcare data, data from vehicles, home automation system status and control
messages, military communications, and many more. This huge variety of data is generated
from a massive number of connected devices, which may be directly connected to the
Internet or connected through gateway devices.
According to statistics from the Information Handling Services, the total number of
connected devices globally is estimated to be around 30 billion (year 2020). This figure is
projected to triple within a short span of 5 years by the year 2025. Figure 1 shows the global
trend and projection for connected devices worldwide.

Fig.1 10-year global trend and projection of connected devices

The traffic flowing through the Internet can be attributed to legacy systems as well as modern-
day systems. The miniaturization of electronics and the cheap affordability of technology is
resulting in a surge of connected devices, which in turn is leading to an explosion of traffic
flowing through the Internet.
One of the best examples of this explosion is the evolution of smartphones. In the late 1990’s,
cellular technology was still expensive, and which could be afforded only by a select few.
Moreover, these devices had only the basic features of voice calling, text messaging, and
sharing of low-quality multimedia. Within the next 10 years, cellular technology had become
common and easily affordable. With time, the features of these devices evolved, and the
dependence of various applications and services on these gadgets on packet-based Internet
accesses started rapidly increasing. The present-day mobile phones (commonly referred to as
smartphones) are Internet-based. The range of applications on these gadgets such as messaging,
video calling, e-mails, games, music streaming, video streaming, and others are solely
dependent on network provider allocated Internet access or Wi-Fi.
Most of the present-day consumers of smartphone technology tend to carry more than one of

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these units. In line with this trend, other connected devices have rapidly increased in numbers
resulting in the number of devices exceeding the number of humans on Earth by multiple times.
Now imagine that as all technologies and domains are moving toward smart management of
systems, the number of sensor/actuator-based systems is rapidly increasing. With time, the need
for location-independent access to monitored and controlled systems keep on rising. This rise in
number leads to a further rise in the number of Internet-connected devices.
The original Internet intended for sending simple messages is now connected with all sorts of
“Things”. These things can be legacy devices, modern-day computers, sensors, actuators,
household appliances, toys, clothes, shoes, vehicles, cameras, and anything which may benefit a
product by increasing its scientific value, accuracy, or even its cosmetic value.
IoT is an anytime, anywhere, and anything (as shown in Figure 2) network of Internet-
connected physical devices or systems capable of sensing an environment and affecting
the sensed environment intelligently. This is generally achieved using low-power and low-
form factor embedded processors on-board the “things” connected to the Internet. In other
words, IoT may be made up of connecting devices, machines, and tools; these things are
made up of sensors/actuators and processors, which connect to the Internet through
wireless technologies.

Typically, IoT systems can be characterized by the following features:

• Associated architectures, which are also efficient and scalable.
• No ambiguity in naming and addressing.
• Massive number of constrained devices, sleeping nodes, mobile devices, and non-IP
devices.
• Intermittent and often unstable connectivity.

Fig. 2 the three characteristic features - anytime, anywhere, and anything - highlight the
robustness and dynamic nature of IoT.

IoT is speculated to have achieved faster and higher technology acceptance as compared to
electricity and telephony. These speculations are not ill placed as evident from the various
statistics shown in Figures 3, 4, and 5.

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Fig. 3 The global IoT spending across various organizations and industries and its subsequent
projection until the year 2021 (sourced from International Data Corporation)

Fig. 4 The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the IoT market

According to an International Data Corporation (IDC) report, worldwide spending on IoT is

reported to have crossed USD 700 billion. The projected spending on IoT based technologies
worldwide is estimated to be about USD 1:1 trillion.
Similarly, the compounded annual growth rate of IoT between the years 2016 and 2021, as
depicted in Figure 4, shows that most of the market share is captured by consumer goods,
which is closely followed by insurance and healthcare industries. However, the combined
industrial share of IoT growth (both cross and resource) is 32% of the collective market, which
is again more than that of the consumer market.
In continuation, Figure 5 shows the IoT market share of various sectors. The manufacturing,
logistics, and asset management sectors were purported to be the largest receivers of IoT-linked
investments in 2017.

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Fig.5 The IoT market share across various industries

1.2 Evolution of IoT

The IoT, as we see it today, is a result of a series of technological paradigm shifts over a few
decades. The technologies that laid the foundation of connected systems by achieving easy
integration to daily lives, popular public acceptance, and massive benefits by using connected
solutions can be considered as the founding solutions for the development of IoT. Figure 6
shows the sequence of technological advancements for shaping the IoT as it is today. These
sequence of technical developments toward the emergence of IoT are described in brief:

Fig.6 The sequence of technological developments leading to the shaping of the modern day
IoT

• ATM: ATMs or automated teller machines are cash distribution machines, which are
linked to a user’s bank account. ATMs dispense cash upon verification of the identity of
a user and their account through a specially coded card. The central concept behind
ATMs was the availability of financial transactions even when banks were closed
beyond their regular work hours. The first ATM became operational and connected
online for the first time in 1974.

• Web: World Wide Web is a global information sharing and communication platform.
The Web became operational for the first time in 1991. Since then, it has been
massively responsible for the many revolutions in the field of computing and
communication.

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• Smart Meters: The earliest smart meter was a power meter, which became operational
in early 2000. These power meters were capable of communicating remotely with the
power grid. They enabled remote monitoring of subscribers’ power usage and eased the
process of billing and power allocation from grids.

• Digital Locks: Digital locks can be considered as one of the earlier attempts at
connected home-automation systems. Present-day digital locks are so robust that
smartphones can be used to control them. Operations such as locking and unlocking
doors, changing key codes, including new members in the access lists, can be easily
performed, and that too remotely using smartphones.

• Connected Healthcare: Here, healthcare devices connect to hospitals, doctors, and

relatives to alert them of medical emergencies and take preventive measures. The
devices may be simple wearable appliances, monitoring just the heart rate and pulse of
the wearer, as well as regular medical devices and monitors in hospitals. The connected
nature of these systems makes the availability of medical records and test results much
faster, cheaper, and convenient for both patients as well as hospital authorities.

• Connected Vehicles: Connected vehicles may communicate to the Internet or with

other vehicles, or even with sensors and actuators contained within it. These vehicles
self-diagnose themselves and alert owners about system failures.

• Smart Cities: This is a city-wide implementation of smart sensing, monitoring, and

actuation systems. The city-wide infrastructure communicating amongst themselves
enables unified and synchronized operations and information dissemination. Some of
the facilities which may benefit are parking, transportation, and others.

• Smart Dust: These are microscopic computers. Smaller than a grain of sand each, they
can be used in numerous beneficial ways, where regular computers cannot operate. For
example, smart dust can be sprayed to measure chemicals in the soil or even to diagnose
problems in the human body.

• Smart Factories: These factories can monitor plant processes, assembly lines,
distribution lines, and manage factory floors all on their own. The reduction in mishaps
due to human errors in judgment or un-optimized processes is drastically reduced.

• UAVs: UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles have emerged as robust public domain
solutions tasked with applications ranging from agriculture, surveys, surveillance,
deliveries, stock maintenance, asset management, and other tasks.

The present-day IoT spans across various domains and applications. The major highlight of this
paradigm is its ability to function as a cross-domain technology enabler. Multiple domains
can be supported and operated upon simultaneously over IoT-based platforms. Support for
legacy technologies and standalone paradigms, along with modern developments, makes
IoT quite robust and economical for commercial, industrial, as well as consumer applications.

IoT is being used in vivid and diverse areas such as smart parking, smartphone detection, traffic
congestion, smart lighting, waste management, smart roads, structural health, urban noise
maps, river floods, water flow, silos stock calculation, water leakages, radiation levels,
explosive and hazardous gases, perimeter access control, snow level monitoring, liquid
presence, forest fire detection, air pollution, smart grid, tank level, photovoltaic installations,
NFC (near-field communications) payments, intelligent shopping applications, landslide and
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avalanche prevention, early detection of earthquakes, supply chain control, smart product
management, and others.

Fig.7 The interdependence and reach of IoT over various application domains and networking
paradigms

Figure 7 shows the various technological interdependencies of IoT with other domains and
networking paradigms such as M2M, CPS, the Internet of environment (IoE), the Internet of
people (IoP), and Industry 4.0. Each of these networking paradigms is a massive domain on its
own, but the omnipresent nature of IoT implies that these domains act as subsets of IoT. The
paradigms are briefly discussed here:

(i) M2M: The M2M or the machine-to-machine paradigm signifies a system of connected
machines and devices, which can talk amongst themselves without human intervention.
The communication between the machines can be for updates on machine status
(stocks, health, power status, and others), collaborative task completion, overall
knowledge of the systems and the environment, and others.

(ii) CPS: The CPS or the cyber physical system paradigm insinuates a closed control
loop— from sensing, processing, and finally to actuation—using a feedback
mechanism. CPS helps in maintaining the state of an environment through the feedback
control loop, which ensures that until the desired state is attained, the system keeps on
actuating and sensing. Humans have a simple supervisory role in CPS-based systems;
most of the ground-level operations are automated.

(iii) IoE: The IoE paradigm is mainly concerned with minimizing and even reversing the
ill- effects of the permeation of Internet-based technologies on the environment. The
major focus areas of this paradigm include smart and sustainable farming, sustainable
and energy-efficient habitats, enhancing the energy efficiency of systems and processes,
and others. In brief, we can safely assume that any aspect of IoT that concerns and
affects the environment, falls under the purview of IoE.

(iv) Industry 4.0: Industry 4.0 is commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution
pertaining to digitization in the manufacturing industry. The previous revolutions
chronologically dealt with mechanization, mass production, and the industrial
revolution, respectively. This paradigm strongly puts forward the concept of smart
factories, where machines talk to one another without much human involvement based

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on a framework of CPS and IoT. The digitization and connectedness in Industry 4.0
translate to better resource and workforce management, optimization of production time
and resources, and better upkeep and lifetimes of industrial systems.

(v) IoP: IoP is a new technological movement on the Internet which aims to decentralize
online social interactions, payments, transactions, and other tasks while maintaining
confidentiality and privacy of its user’s data.

1.2.1 IoT versus M2M

M2M or the machine-to-machine paradigm refers to communications and interactions between

various machines and devices. These interactions can be enabled through a cloud computing
infrastructure, a server, or simply a local network hub. M2M collects data from machinery and
sensors, while also enabling device management and device interaction. Telecommunication
services providers introduced the term M2M, and technically emphasized on machine
interactions via one or more communication networks (e.g., 3G, 4G, 5G, satellite, public
networks).

M2M is part of the IoT and is considered as one of its sub-domains, as shown in Figure 7.
M2M standards occupy a core place in the IoT landscape. However, in terms of operational and
functional scope, IoT is vaster than M2M and comprises a broader range of interactions such as
the interactions between devices/things, things, and people, things and applications, and people
with applications; M2M enables the amalgamation of workflows comprising such interactions
within IoT. Internet connectivity is central to the IoT theme but is not necessarily focused on
the use of telecom networks.

1.2.2 IoT versus CPS

Cyber physical systems (CPS) encompasses sensing, control, actuation, and feedback as a
complete package. In other words, a digital twin is attached to a CPS-based system. As
mentioned earlier, a digital twin is a virtual system–model relation, in which the system
signifies a physical system or equipment or a piece of machinery, while the model represents
the mathematical model or representation of the physical system’s behaviour or operation.
Many a time, a digital twin is used parallel to a physical system, especially in CPS as it allows
for the comparison of the physical system’s output, performance, and health. Based on
feedback from the digital twin, a physical system can be easily given corrective
directions/commands to obtain desirable outputs.

In contrast, the IoT paradigm does not compulsorily need feedback or a digital twin system.
IoT is more focused on networking than controls. Some of the constituent sub-systems in an
IoT environment (such as those formed by CPS-based instruments and networks) may include
feedback and controls too. In this light, CPS may be considered as one of the sub-domains of
IoT, as shown in Figure 7.

1.2.3 IoT versus WoT

From a developer’s perspective, the Web of Things (WoT) paradigm enables access and control
over IoT resources and applications. These resources and applications are generally built using
technologies such as HTML 5.0, JavaScript, Ajax, PHP, and others. REST (representational
state transfer) is one of the key enablers of WoT. The use of RESTful principles and RESTful
APIs (application program interface) enables both developers and deployers to benefit from the
recognition, acceptance, and maturity of existing web technologies without having to redesign

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and redeploy solutions from scratch. Still, designing and building the WoT paradigm has
various adaptability and security challenges, especially when trying to build a globally uniform
WoT.

As IoT is focused on creating networks comprising objects, things, people, systems, and
applications, which often do not consider the unification aspect and the limitations of the
Internet, the need for WoT, which aims to integrate the various focus areas of IoT into the
existing Web is really invaluable. Technically, WoT can be thought of as an application layer-
based hat added over the network layer. However, the scope of IoT applications is much
broader; IoT also which includes non- IP-based systems that are not accessible through the
web.

1.3 Enabling IoT and the Complex Interdependence of Technologies

IoT is a paradigm built upon complex interdependencies of technologies (both legacy and
modern), which occur at various planes of this paradigm. Regarding Figure 8, we can divide the
IoT paradigm into four planes: services, local connectivity, global connectivity, and processing.

Fig.8 The IoT planes, various enablers of IoT, and the complex interdependencies among them

Services Plane: If we consider a bottom-up view, the services offered fall under the control
and purview of service providers. The service plane is composed of two parts: 1) things or
devices and 2) low-power connectivity.

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• Typically, the services offered in this layer are a combination of things and low-power
connectivity. For example, any IoT application requires the basic setup of sensing,
followed by rudimentary processing (often), and a low-power, low-range network,
which is mainly built upon the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol.
• The things may be wearables, computers, smartphones, household appliances, smart
glasses, factory machinery, vending machines, vehicles, UAVs, robots, and other such
contraptions (which may even be just a sensor).
• The immediate low-power connectivity, which is responsible for connecting the things
in local implementation, may be legacy protocols such as WiFi, Ethernet, or cellular. In
contrast, modern-day technologies are mainly wireless and often programmable such as
Zigbee, RFID, Bluetooth, 6LoWPAN, LoRA, DASH, Insteon, and others. The range of
these connectivity technologies is severely restricted; they are responsible for the
connectivity between the things of the IoT and the nearest hub or gateway to access the
Internet.

Local connectivity plane:

• The local connectivity is responsible for distributing Internet access to multiple local
IoT deployments. This distribution may be on the basis of the physical placement of the
things, on the basis of the application domains, or even on the basis of providers of
services.
• Services such as address management, device management, security, sleep scheduling,
and others fall within the scope of this plane. For example, in a smart home
environment, the first floor and the ground floor may have local IoT implementations,
which have various things connected to the network via low-power, low-range
connectivity technologies. The traffic from these two floors merges into a single router
or a gateway. The total traffic intended for the Internet from a smart home leaves
through a single gateway or router, which may be assigned a single global IP address
(for the whole house). This helps in the significant conservation of already limited
global IP addresses.
• The local connectivity plane falls under the purview of IoT management as it directly
deals with strategies to use/reuse addresses based on things and applications.

The modern-day “edge computing” paradigm is deployed in conjunction with these first two
planes: services and local connectivity.

Global connectivity plane:

• In continuation, the plane of global connectivity plays a significant role in enabling IoT
in the real sense by allowing for worldwide implementations and connectivity between
things, users, controllers, and applications.
• This plane also falls under the purview of IoT management as it decides how and when
to store data, when to process it, when to forward it, and in which form to forward it.
• The Web, datacenters, remote servers, Cloud, and others make up this plane.

The paradigm of “fog computing” lies between the planes of local connectivity and global
connectivity. It often serves to manage the load of global connectivity infrastructure by
offloading the computation nearer to the source of the data itself, which reduces the traffic load
on the global Internet.

Processing plane:
The final plane of processing can be considered as a top-up of the basic IoT networking

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framework. The continuous rise in the usefulness and penetration of IoT in various application
areas such as industries, transportation, healthcare, and others are the result of this plane.
• The members in this plane may be termed as IoT tools, simply because they wring-out
useful and human-readable information from all the raw data that flows from various
IoT devices and deployments.
• The various sub-domains of this plane include intelligence, conversion (data and format
conversion, and data cleaning), learning (making sense of temporal and spatial data
patterns), cognition (recognizing patterns and mapping it to already known patterns),
algorithms (various control and monitoring algorithms), visualization (rendering
numbers and strings in the form of collective trends, graphs, charts, and projections),
and analysis (estimating the usefulness of the generated information, making sense of
the information with respect to the application and place of data generation, and
estimating future trends based on past and present patterns of information obtained).
• Various computing paradigms such as “big data”, “machine learning”, and others, fall
within the scope of this domain.

1.4 IoT Networking Components

An IoT implementation is composed of several components, which may vary with their
application domains. the broad components that come into play during the establishment of any
IoT network can be classified into six types:
1) IoT node, 2) IoT router, 3) IoT LAN, 4) IoT WAN, 5) IoT gateway, and 6) IoT proxy.

A typical IoT implementation from a networking perspective is shown in Figure 9. The

individual components are briefly described here:

Fig.9 A typical IoT network ecosystem highlighting the various networking components - from
IoT nodes to the Internet

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(i) IoT Node: These are the networking devices within an IoT LAN. Each of these devices is
typically made up of a sensor, a processor, and a radio, which communicates with the
network infrastructure (either within the LAN or outside it). The nodes may be connected to
other nodes inside a LAN directly or by means of a common gateway for that LAN.
Connections outside the LAN are through gateways and proxies.
(ii) IoT Router: An IoT router is a piece of networking equipment that is primarily tasked
with the routing of packets between various entities in the IoT network; it keeps the traffic
flowing correctly within the network. A router can be repurposed as a gateway by enhancing
its functionalities.
(iii) IoT LAN: The local area network (LAN) enables local connectivity within the purview
of a single gateway. Typically, they consist of short-range connectivity technologies. IoT
LANs may or may not be connected to the Internet. Generally, they are localized within a
building or an organization.
(iv) IoT WAN: The wide area network (WAN) connects various network segments such as
LANs. They are typically organizationally and geographically wide, with their operational
range lying between a few kilometers to hundreds of kilometers. IoT WANs connect to the
Internet and enable Internet access to the segments they are connecting.
(v) IoT Gateway: An IoT gateway is simply a router connecting the IoT LAN to a WAN or
the Internet. Gateways can implement several LANs and WANs. Their primary task is to
forward packets between LANs and WANs, and the IP layer using only layer 3.
(vi) IoT Proxy: Proxies actively lie on the application layer and performs application layer
functions between IoT nodes and other entities. Typically, application layer proxies are a
means of providing security to the network entities under it; it helps to extend the addressing
range of its network.
In Figure 9 various IoT nodes within an IoT LAN are configured to one another as well as
talk to the IoT router whenever they are in the range of it. The devices have locally unique
(LU-x) device identifiers. These identifiers are unique only within a LAN. There is a high
chance that these identifiers may be repeated in a new LAN. Each IoT LAN has its own
unique identifier, which is denoted by IoT LAN-x in Figure 9.
A router acts as a connecting link between various LANs by forwarding messages from the
LANs to the IoT gateway or the IoT proxy. As the proxy is an application layer device, it is
additionally possible to include features such as firewalls, packet filters, and other security
measures besides the regular routing operations.
Various gateways connect to an IoT WAN, which links these devices to the Internet. There
may be cases where the gateway or the proxy may directly connect to the Internet. This
network may be wired or wireless; however, IoT deployments heavily rely on wireless
solutions. This is mainly attributed to the large number of devices that are integrated into the
network; wireless technology is the only feasible and neat-enough solution to avoid the
hassles of laying wires and dealing with the restricted mobility rising out of wired
connections.

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1.5 Addressing Strategies in IoT

Table below lists the differences in features of IPv4 and IPv6. The most interesting point to
note is that as compared to IPv4, which relies more on reliable delivery of packets between
source and destination, an IPv6 packet is more address oriented. Due to the increasing rate
of devices being connected to the Internet, the early developers of IPv6 felt the need for
accommodating addresses as more crucial than the need for reliable transmission of packets
(which was the main feature of IPv4-based routing of packets). Figure 4.10 shows the address
format of IPv6, which is 128 bits long.

Feature IPv4 IPv6

Developed IETF 1974 IETF1998
Address length (bits) 32 128
No. of Addresses 232 2128
Notation Dotted decimal Hexadecimal
Dynamic allocation of addresses DHCP DHCPv6, SLAAC
IPSec Optional Compulsory
Header size Variable Fixed
Header checksum Yes No
Header options Yes No
Broadcast addresses Yes No
Multicast addresses No Yes
Feature Focus on reliable transmission Focus on addressing

Fig.1.10 The IPv6 address format

The first three blocks are designated as the global prefix, which is globally unique. The next
block is designated as the subnet prefix, which identifies the subnet of an
interface/gateway through which LANs may be connected to the Internet. Finally, the
last four blocks (64 bits) of hexadecimal addresses are collectively known as the interface
identifier (IID). IIDs may be generated based on MAC (media access control) identifiers
of devices/nodes or using pseudo-random number generator algorithms.
The IPv6 addresses can be divided into seven separate address types, which is generally
based on how these addresses are used or where they are deployed.
(i) Global Unicast (GUA): These addresses are assigned to single IoT entities/ interfaces;
they enable the entities to transmit traffic to and from the Internet In regular IoT
deployments, these addresses are assigned to gateways, proxies, or WANs.
(ii) Multicast: These addresses enable transmission of messages from a single networked
entity to multiple destination entities simultaneously.

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(iii) Link Local (LL): The operational domain of these addresses are valid only within a
network segment such as LAN. These addresses may be repeated in other network
segments/LANs, but are unique within that single network segment
(iv) Unique Local (ULA): Similar to LL addresses, ULA cannot be routed over the Internet.
These addresses may be repeated in other network segments/LANS but are unique within that
single network segment.
(v) Loopback: It is also known as the localhost address. Typically, these addresses are used
by developers and network testers for diagnostics and system checks.
(vi) Unspecified: Here, all the bits in the IPv6 address are set to zero and the destination
address is not specified.
(vii) Solicited-node Multicast: It is a multicast address based on the IPv6 address of an IoT
node or entity.
1.5.1 Address management classes
The IoT deployment and network topology are largely dependent on where it is deployed.
Unlike traditional IPv4 networked devices, the newer IoT devices largely depend on IPv6 for
address allocation and management of addresses, which again is dictated by the application
and the place of deployment of the IoT solution. Keeping these requirements in consideration,
the addressing strategies in IoT may be broadly differentiated into seven classes, as shown in
Figure 11. These classes are as follows:
(i) Class 1: The IoT nodes are not connected to any other interface or the Internet except with
themselves. This class can be considered as an isolated class, where the communication
between IoT nodes is restricted within a LAN only. The IoT nodes in this class are identified
only by their link local (LL) addresses, as shown in Figure 11(a). These LL addresses may be
repeated for other devices outside the purview of this network class. The communication
among the nodes may be direct or through other nodes (as in a mesh configuration).
(ii) Class 2: This configuration is mainly utilized for enabling communication between two
or more IoT LANs or WANs. The IoT nodes within the LANs cannot directly communicate
to nodes in the other LANs using their LL addresses, but through their LAN gateways (which
have a unique address assigned to them). Generally, ULA is used for addressing, however, in
certain scenarios, GUA may also be used. Figure 11(b) shows a class 2 IoT network
topology: L1-L5 are the LL addresses of the locally unique IoT nodes within the LAN,
whereas Ul and U2 are the unique addresses of the two gateways extending communication
to their LANs with the WAN. The WAN may or may not connect to the Internet.
(iii) Class 3: Figure 11(c) shows a class 3 IoT network configuration, where the IoT LAN is
connected to an IoT proxy. The proxy performs a host of functions ranging from address
allocation, address management to providing security to the network underneath it. In this
class, the loT proxy only uses ULA (denoted Lx-Ux in the figure).

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Fig.11 Various IoT topology configurations. LL/L denotes the link local addresses, LU
denotes the locally unique link addresses (ULA), and LG denotes the globally unique link
addresses (GUA).

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(iv) Clase 4: In this class, the IoT proxy acts as a gateway between the LAN and the Internet
and provides GUA to the IoT nodes within the LAN. A globally unique prefix is allotted to
this gateway, which it uses with the individual device identifiers to extend global Internet
connectivity to the IoT nodes themselves. This configuration is shown in Figure 11(d). An
important point to note in this class is that the gateway also enables local communication
between the nodes without the need for the packets to be routed through the Internet.
Additionally, the IoT nodes within the gateway can talk to one another directly without
always involving the gateway. A proxy beyond the gateway enables global communication
through the Internet.
(v) Class 5: This class is functionally similar to class 4. However, the main difference with
class 4 is that this class follows a star topology with the gateway as the center of the star. All
the communication from the IoT nodes under the gateway has to go through the gateway, as
shown in Figure 11(e). A proxy beyond the gateway enables global communication through
the Internet. The IoT nodes within a gateway's operational purview have the same GUA.
(vi) Class 6: The configuration of this class is again similar to class 5. However, the IoT
nodes are all assigned unique global addresses (GUA), which enables a point-to-point
communication network with an Internet gateway. A class 6 IoT network configuration is
shown in Figure 11(f). Typically, this class is very selectively used for special purposes.
(vii) Class 7: The class 7 configuration is shown in Figure 11(g). Multiple gateways may be
present; the configuration is such that the nodes should be reachable through any of the
gateways. Typically, organizational IoT deployments follow this class of configuration. The
concept of multihoming is important and inherent to this class.
1.5.2 Addressing during node mobility
Traditional networks, mainly computer networks, and even paradigms such as M2M and CPS
seldom take into account the need for addressing strategies when the IoT nodes are mobile.
However, in a realistic scenario, especially in modern- day IoT systems (which are low-
power and have low form-factor), the need for addressing of mobile nodes is extremely
crucial to avoid address clashes of addresses accommodating a large number of IoT nodes.
One of the following three strategies may be to for ensure portability of addresses in the event
of node mobility in IoT deployments as shown in Figure 12:
(i) Global Prefix Changes: Figure 12(a) abstracts the addressing strategy using global prefix
changes. A node from the left LAN moves to the LAN on the right. The node undergoing
movement is highlighted in the figure. The nodes in the first LAN have the prefix A, which
changes to B under the domain of the new gateway overseeing the operation of nodes in the
new LAN. However, it may happen that due to movement, the device identifier may face
clashes. Recall the structure of the IPv6 address (Figure 10). The device identifier, if allotted
randomly, might face an address clash upon the node's arrival into the new LAN as there may
already be a similar node identifier present in it. Typically addresses are assigned using
DHCPv6/ SLAAC; however, in this scenario, it is always prudent to have static node IP
addresses to avoid a clash of addresses. This strategy is, in most cases, beneficial as the IoT
nodes may be resource constrained and have low-processing resources due to which it may
not be able to handle protocols such as DHCPv6 or SLAAC.
(ii) Prefix Changes within WANs: Figure 12(b) abstracts the addressing strategy for prefix

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 Introduction to Internet of Things (IOT) 21CS735

changes within WANs. In case the WAN changes its global prefix, the network entities
underneath it must be resilient to change and function normally. The address allocation is
hence delegated to entities such as gateways and proxies, which make use of ULAs to
manage the network within the WAN.
(iii) Remote Anchoring: Figure 12(c) abstracts the addressing strategy using a remote
anchoring point. This is applicable in certain cases which require that the IoT node's global
addresses are maintained and not affected by its mobility or even the change in network
prefixes. Although a bit expensive to implement, this strategy of having a remote anchoring
point from which the IoT nodes obtain their global addresses through tunneling ensures that
the nodes are resilient to changes and are quite stable. Even if the node's original network's
(LAN) prefix changes from A to B, the node's global address remains immune to this change.
Tunneling: It is a networking protocol in which data from private networks can be seamlessly
streamed over a public network in the form of encapsulated packets. Some of the best
examples of tunneling are virtual private networks (VPNs), secure shell (SSH), and others.

Fig.12 Various scenarios during mobility of IoT nodes and their addressing strategies. ID-
Prefix denotes the point to which the IoT node is attached to for address allocation.

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