Any Network

A typical IoT application might rely on a well known network context: single address space, direct addressability, well defined service level capabilities. However this ideal scenario is likely to be challenged in a number of different ways:

• different capabilities available in different geographical deployments
• the need for multiple uplinks in a single device ( e,g. for reliability reasons )
• the need to implement QoS policies
• the need to bridge the gap between the WAN side and the LAN side
• the need to display P2P or mesh behavior in a managed way ( for instance by defining the routing protocol ( e.g. UCMR ) in a WSN ( Wireless Sensor Network )
• … plus eventually many more.

And the trickiest part of it is the the need to have these network functionalities made transparent to the application side – mostly to reduce complexity of control logic development on the devices, where the communication function is mostly meant to be “just” a messging bus.

At Axiros, we take this problem domain really seriously, as we come from managing the communication function at the edge on very large communication networks. We understand the complexity of multivendor device configuration management and the mapping of this up to the service layer.

In the IoT product cycle this is made even more complex by the assumptions amplitude on the networking conditions; an IoT product is designed to attach to a variety of different networks, physical and logical domains, some of which not even directly addressable by the control plane. As usual, when the assumptions become too wide, compromises take the lead; up to the point that those compromises become strong constraints to the product lifecycle.

Applications designed and operated in AXPERIENCE will have less connstraints than others and in this way they will operate in a wider set of circumstances and have a more extended lifecycle.

Let’s see some practical examples:

• Ability to switch the transport layer of a management function – e.g. from CWMP to MQTT – based on the actual network capabilities
• Ability to encapsulate higher layer APIs in a sequence of message flows – still maintaining the transactionality of the API
• Ability to implement session aware communication between the managed edge device and the management function – even when the communication starts on one network physical connection and ends on a different one
• Ability to maintain on an edge device an inventory of the open sessions even when those sessions are run on a number of different network technologies
  

The number of use cases is practically limited only by the complexity of the requirements, and – at Axiros – we work to offer the application developer the ability to cope with the intricacies of an heterogeneous network environment in the simplest way.

And, in addition to the network transports which are already included in AXPERIENCE, Axiros offers the ability to include also transports that come from third parties, in an open, pluggable way. As such AXPERIENCE becomes your perfect tool to deploy in every condition, without having to compromise on the application function.

 

Source: Axiros