Glowbal IP: An Adaptive and Transparent IPv6 Integration in the Internet of Things

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) requires scalability, extensibility and a transparent integration of multi-technology in order to reach an efficient support for global communications, discovery and look-up, as well as access to services and information. To achieve these goals, it is necessary to enable a homogenous and seamless machine-to-machine (M2M) communication mechanism allowing global access to devices, sensors and smart objects. In this respect, the proposed answer to these technological requirements is called Glowbal IP, which is based on a homogeneous access to the devices/sensors offered by the IPv6 addressing and core network. Glowbal IP's main advantages with regard to 6LoWPAN/IPv6 are not only that it presents a low overhead to reach a higher performance on a regular basis, but also that it determines the session and identifies global access by means of a session layer defined over the application layer. Technologies without any native support for IP are thereby adaptable to IP e.g. IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Low Energy. This extension towards the IPv6 network opens access to the features and methods of the devices through a homogenous access based on WebServices (e.g. RESTFul/CoAP). In addition to this, Glowbal IP offers global interoperability among the different devices, and interoperability with external servers and users applications. All in all, it allows the storage of information related to the devices in the network through the extension of the Domain Name System (DNS) from the IPv6 core network, by adding the Service Directory extension (DNS-SD) to store information about the sensors, their properties and functionality. A step forward in network-based information systems is thereby reached, allowing a homogenous discovery, and access to the devices from the IoT. Thus, the IoT capabilities are exploited by allowing an easier and more transparent integration of the end users applications with sensors for the future evaluations and use cases.