Interoperability

Interoperability is a significant problem in the Internet of Things (IoT) today for several reasons:

1. Fragmented Standards and Protocols:

   • The IoT ecosystem is characterized by a wide variety of communication protocols, data formats, and device interfaces, often developed by different vendors and organizations.
   • This lack of standardization makes it challenging for IoT devices and systems to seamlessly communicate and exchange data with each other.

2. Proprietary Ecosystems:

   • Many IoT vendors create their own proprietary ecosystems, locking customers into their specific hardware, software, and cloud platforms.
   • This vendor lock-in hinders the ability to integrate IoT devices and solutions from different providers, limiting interoperability.

3. Diverse Device Capabilities:

   • IoT devices range from simple sensors to complex industrial equipment, each with varying computational power, memory, and communication capabilities.
   • Reconciling these diverse device capabilities and ensuring seamless integration is a significant challenge.

4. Evolving Technologies:

   • The IoT landscape is rapidly evolving, with new technologies, protocols, and standards emerging constantly.
   • Keeping up with these changes and ensuring that IoT systems can adapt and remain interoperable is an ongoing challenge.

5. Lack of a Unified IoT standard:

   • While there are efforts to develop unified IoT platforms and frameworks, the market is still fragmented, with multiple competing solutions and a lack of a dominant industry standard.
   • This makes it difficult for IoT systems to seamlessly integrate and interoperate across different platforms.

6. Security and Privacy Concerns:

   • Ensuring secure and private data exchange between IoT devices and systems is crucial, but can also introduce additional interoperability challenges, as security measures may not be compatible across different vendors and platforms.

Z-Mesh makes all this much simpler by providing a common standard and an open-source framework. It solves the problem of interoperability and enables scalability which unleashes the network effect.

How to achieve interoperability

Prerequisites for achieving interoperability:

• Common networking protocol (layer-3)
• Unified Namespace (Agreed addressing/naming, eg. IP or URI)
• Compatible data formats and encoding (syntax)
• Shared semantics and application-layer APIs (meaning)
• Mutual authentication and trust frameworks (message authentication)
• Common security policies (encryption)

Z-Mesh defines all of the above in a layered approach, allowing any device, service or application, using any type of physical medium, to communicate.

To understand the problem with connection-oriented protocols, such as the internet protocol (IP) and why they are a bad fit for IoT, we need to understand what they were designed for.

Problem: Connection-Oriented protocols

50 years ago ARPA invented the Internet in order run programs on remote mainframe-computers. The IP protocol is connection-oriented and modeled after the telephone system. Problems include:

• Encrypted Multicast not invented: Sensor-data must be distributed to many apps
• Not secure: Only connections are encrypted; Data comes out of the other end unencrypted!
• Synchronous: The remote host must be online
• Battery-driven sensors not supported: Connecting to a sleepy battery-driven sensor not possible
• Integration mess: Everything ends up connecting to everything - it does not scale!

To illustrate the problem, imagine a company using many separate vertical IoT-solutions, each with their own sensor and cloud-based application:

In this example, the Workspace Management solution is a proprietary single-vendor vertical (siloed) solution. Therefore, all motion-sensor data is stored in the Workspace Management system. When other systems, such as the Cleaning Optimization-, Facility Management-, Analytics, CTS/BMS- and BIM/Security system needs the motion-sensor data, a custom integration must be made from each of these systems to the Workspace Management system.

Connection-oriented protocols is a bad fit for IoT; Data ends up in silos and distributing it, using integrations, makes it complex and expensive to scale up!

Problems with connection-oriented IoT solutions:

• Expensive to maintain: Lots of integrations to maintain
• Expensive to scale: New apps requires multiple integrations
• Vendor lock-in: Proprietary sensors or interfaces
• Security problems: Integrations are vulnerable
• No control over access to or ownership of data
• No control over changes to API-interface
• Privacy issues (GDPR) with data stored in cloud
• Risk of hacking: Data is stored unencrypted in cloud

Solution: Z-Mesh

Z-Mesh supports offline devices, mains-powered services and applications. It has a unified namespace so that any device or application can consume any data produced by any device or service. Z-Mesh is an Information-Centric Networking architecture with the following features:

• Content-Centric: Network knows where to find content
• Broadcast support: Network takes care of distrubuting the sensor-data (content) to many apps
• Secure: Content is encrypted until used, both in transit and when stored
• Asynchronous: Sender and receiver need not be online at the same time
• Battery-driven sensors supported: Sensor data is sent and stored in the network
• Integration simplicity: The network is the database that caches all the produced Content
• Network caches data: Can be retrieved at a lator point in time
• Supports wireless: Any device/service/app can participate using any type of wireless radio
• Runs on top of IP: Any IP-connected device/service/app can run Z-Mesh

Z-Mesh is a networking solution that acts as a middleware layer between your sensors and services and the using-facing applications:

Data-Centric (not connection-oriented)

Z-Mesh is a data-centric (information-centric), not connection-oriented, networking protocol. To quote Wikipedia (opens new window):

Information-centric networking (ICN) is an approach to evolve the Internet infrastructure away from a host-centric paradigm, based on perpetual connectivity and the end-to-end principle, to a network architecture in which the focal point is identified information (or content or data).

ICN networks are particularly well suited for Internet of Things in commercial buildings and in industrial applications.

The Network effect caused by interoperability

Because the network consists of (Wireless) Forwarders, you can start with a few sensors and applications and expand your network at any time. It let’s you add things and services, without changes in your existing network. It also lets you expand in a way that makes maximum use of your budget. Low-cost sensors can be installed anywhere they are needed. Sensors, network functions, databases, services and data-providers can be shared. Only one integration is needed when you attach something to the network.

Advantages when using Z-Mesh:

• No vendor lock-in: Anyone can make apps or sensors
• Better security: Communication is standard and encrypted
• Control over data and ownership: Data is controled by you
• No privacy issues: Data is stored on-prem
• Low integration cost: (Re-)Use generic ”adapters”
• Easy to maintain: Fewer integrations to secure
• Easy to scale up: Integrate app or sensor once
• Privacy: End-to-end encrypted data, also when stored
• Open (source): Sensors and integrations are easy to make
• Interoperability: Enables interchangeability (sustainable)