The ‘Internet of Things’ versus the ‘Internet of People’
In the not too distant future, the ‘internet of things’ is set to surpass the ‘internet of people’. Paul Skelton reports.
The popularity of the internet truly accelerated in the 1990s. Now, easier content distribution and the increased ability to share information are upsetting industries (for example, YouTube challenging TV) while also creating new paradigms for communication (such as Skype and Twitter).
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But, the internet as we know it is just the beginning, says GreenPeak Technologies founder and chief executive Cees Links.
“These days, more and more equipment is being connected to the internet. And the number of devices that are being connected to the internet is starting to shift the balance away from an ‘internet of people’ towards an ‘internet of things’,” he says.
“The future is clearly moving in a direction where the number of things connected to the internet will overwhelm the number of connected people, and in the future ‘sentrollers’ will dominate the internet of things.”
According to Cees, ‘sentrollers’ is a new, all-encompassing term for sensors, actuators and controllers – the various devices that make up the new internet of things: “For example, a thermostat senses the temperature, compares this with a preset desired temperature and activates a heater or air conditioner, controlling, or ‘sentrolling’, the temperature.”
The ‘internet of things’ concept isn’t new – it has been written and spoken about many times before. But, Cees explains, there are many misconceptions out there about what the technology will actually offer end users.
“The internet of things isn’t about getting your toaster to tell you when your bread is ready; the reality is that if you have, say, a connected clothes dryer it can tell you if you need to change the dust filter before it fails.
“It’s all about being practical.
“It’s certainly not about content – it’s not about photos, movies or music. It’s about being aware of your environment and it covers everything from your lights to your thermostats, right through to your washing machine or dishwasher.”
Today, there are numerous sentrollers situated in the average home. Thermostats, security control panels with motion sensors, utility meters, remote controls motorised blinds, lights and light switches, and some door locks can all be connected to the internet.
“Looking at an average household today, home owners may have five to 10 devices connected to the internet. In the next few years, however, this number will be easily dwarfed.
“In fact, industry analysts predict up to 100 connected ‘things’ per person. Already, the number of devices connecting to the internet is steadily growing by several million per week – a quiet revolution is taking place.”
But an increasing number of devices that are connected to the internet raises a few questions – in particular, if each device requires its own node, how can we keep up with the demand for internet addresses? And, what effect will a dramatic increase in the number of devices have on network traffic?
“While each ‘thing’ will need a unique identification number, this problem has already been addressed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) through the introduction of IPv6, which succeeded IPv4,” Cees says.
“This means that building the internet of things doesn’t require a lot of extra work in terms of infrastructure. With the new IPv6 addressing scheme, the current infrastructure is capable of handling the increased number of nodes.
“As for the other observation, the internet of things will not likely (and definitely not initially) create a lot of additional network traffic. People have a tendency to produce or absorb a lot of data, but in comparison sentrollers are relatively minimal in data production and consumption (i.e. bits instead of terabytes).
“Compared to, say, uploading a photo to Facebook, the network traffic is zero. It requires a few hundred bits compared to the 64 million bits in one photo. Even if you have 1,000 devices it still doesn’t compare.
“More importantly, however, is whether the growing dependency on the internet for sentrollers in addition to content is going to put higher demands on security and reliability. More work definitely needs to be done to avoid the growing critical dependency on the internet that could cause massive disruption of society.”
Perhaps the most pressing issue, however, is ensuring long battery life in sentrollers, which, Cees says, is something that would be handled by the widespread adoption of ZigBee technology – an open wireless standard and operates in the 2.4GHz band.
“Most WiFi devices are connected to mains power, and if they’re not, like a laptop or a smartphone, they must be regularly charged. But connecting sentrollers to mains power can be cumbersome, requiring expensive wiring and expert installation.
“WiFi isn’t suitable for this purpose. Having 100 devices in your home with a battery life of one year means that you will have to change, on average, two batteries every week.
“For sentrollers, data rates are of low priority compared to a device’s energy consumption. This means that the battery life of the device should exceed its expected life span. ZigBee, with its low power and meshing capabilities, is suited to act as access technology for sentrollers processing low data rate communication packets from wireless devices on long life batteries.
“Just as WiFi was a breakthrough for internet at home, ZigBee is enabling the next wave of the technology revolution.
“In the same way that WiFi is now synonymous with wireless internet, ZigBee is quickly becoming synonymous with the wireless internet of things, making it possible for anything to seamlessly connect to the internet without worries about power or battery life.”
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