What are the requirements of the IoT device for the network

Most IoT devices are built with components from many different manufacturers, one for sensors, one for network management, and the other for backends. To this end, we propose a basic taxonomy for rating IoT endpoints. It has three main axes: latency, data throughput, and processing power.

delay

Many IoT implementations do not require the millisecond latency that traditional enterprise networks can provide, thus opening up many network connection options, which means looking for the possibility of low prices.

For example, a connected parking meter does not need to report more than once per minute, so a delay-sensing wireless option like LoRaWAN may be perfectly acceptable. This type of system even sends updates back to the central hub using standard cellular SMS services.

For applications that are not tolerant of delays, such as production lines or oil and gas extraction, industrial Ethernet or especially low-latency wireless links should be used. Older generation orchestration systems usually handle the coordination between instructions and machines well, but adding real-time analytics data to the mix increases network demand.

What are the requirements of the IoT device for the network

Data throughput

Similarly, network experts who are dealing with megabits per second should adjust their expectations here, because there are many IoT devices that require only a few kilobytes per second or less.

Devices with low bandwidth requirements include smart building equipment, such as connected door locks and light switches, most of which indicate "on" or "off".

The lower the requirements on a given data link, the more likely it is that a wireless technology with poor performance will be used. Low-power WAN and Sigfox may not have enough bandwidth to handle large amounts of traffic, but they are great for connections that do not need to move large amounts of data first, and they can cover important areas. Depending on the terrain, Sigfox has a range of 3 to 50 kilometers, and for Bluetooth, it has a range of 100 to 1000 meters, depending on the Bluetooth class used.

In contrast, IoT setups such as multiple security cameras connected to a central hub to the back end for image analysis will require multiple times the bandwidth. The pieces that make up the network must be more capable and therefore more expensive. For example, widely distributed devices may require a dedicated LTE connection and may even require an own micro unit to cover.

Processing capacity

The extent to which an IoT device can handle itself, indirectly measures its impact on the network. But IoT devices are still relevant when compared to other devices that perform similar functions. If a device continuously streams raw data onto the network without performing any meaningful analysis or shaping itself, then the traffic burden it may bring is greater than a device that does at least part of its work.

Of course, this is not always the case. Many less capable devices do not generate large amounts of data to block the network connections they have, and some better functioning devices (such as industrial robots with a large number of built-in functions to process the data they collect) may still generate a lot of traffic .

However, when comparing equipment to other equipment performing similar work, the computing power of airborne equipment is still relevant, especially in industries such as manufacturing and energy extraction that need to perform a lot of analysis somewhere.

More relevant in edge settings, where some or all of the data analysis is done on devices near the endpoint. An edge gateway can be a good choice when it is necessary to perform fairly complex analysis as close to real time as possible. However, the edge gateway does not have the same resources available as a full data center or cloud, so the amount of work that can be done on the endpoint remains a critical issue. Comprehensive analysis of raw information can reduce traffic on the network.