Three things to learn before building and deploying IoT devices-Alibaba Cloud Developer Community

With the extensive publicity of the Internet of Things (IoT), whether at home or at work, it is increasingly popular in our daily life and almost unavoidable. Even so, few of us really have a comprehensive understanding of the complex IoT ecosystem, its components, and how they interact. If you are new to IoT games, these devices or things themselves may bring you a lot of confusion. The confusing heterogeneity of IoT devices (partly due to too many connection options) may challenge what we think the connection object should be.

Even leaders in the technology industry may ignore some basic but less obvious aspects of the key component of the internet of things. In this article, let's take a look at the three facts about Internet of Things devices, which should be known to any company that wants to start an Internet of Things project.

1. All commercial IoT devices must pass strict regulatory authentication.

If you want to develop and commercialize your own IoT devices, you must pass the RF operation certification in the corresponding market. Regulatory tests can ensure the successful coexistence of IoT devices to minimize interference in the shared radio spectrum. Unfortunately, no universal certification body has globally recognized testing standards; On the contrary, each country or region has its own system and responsible organization. For example, you need FCC certification in the United States, IC in Canada and CE in Europe.

Many companies do not realize the harsh and time-consuming certification process. The test must be conducted in an approved test laboratory and may require a single component and the entire product to be tested. It may take weeks or even months to prepare and submit the necessary documents, not to mention the expensive testing costs. To give a simple example, FCC certification for RF equipment usually includes two levels: ordinary emission test (up to $5,000) and more complex intentional radiation test (up to 15, USD 000). If your device is operating in different regions, you must ensure that it obtains all applicable certifications.

The best way to minimize the significant cost and burden of regulatory testing is to plan the product from the first day of design and select "pre-certified" equipment components. Generally, pre-certified RF transceiver has passed CE and FCC tests, which can save you the most troublesome part of equipment certification. The use of these components can also minimize the risk of designing unqualified products, as well as unnecessary costs and delays caused by retesting.

2. Edge Intelligence ( Edge Intelligence ) not integrated with IoT devices

with the explosive growth of data volume in the IoT era, edge computing has attracted great attention. Facts have proved that conventional models for processing and storing all data in the cloud or data center are expensive and inefficient. One of the main reasons is that most telemetry data are usually irrelevant and do not need to be transmitted to the cloud. For example, a status message is only available when you are notified of an exception. This centralized approach also puts undue pressure on the data infrastructure and causes unnecessary latency in time-consuming applications.

This is why edge computing or edge intelligence is becoming more and more important. It refers to processing data locally near the source. At first glance, it is easy to link edge intelligence with the functions of terminal devices, but this is not the case.

Consumer IoT products are usually complex, but in industrial and commercial environments, more networking devices are small, battery-powered sensors with very low computing power. In networks with hundreds or even thousands of data points, you cannot afford to have high processing capabilities on each device.

Instead, intelligent push is pushed to IoT gateway or industrial PC, which can aggregate data from multiple endpoints. These local data centers only process relevant information and then push it to central infrastructure such as the cloud. Leaving heavy computing tasks to edge gateways rather than on each device can achieve a simpler architecture and reduce costs and complexity.

3. IoT devices do not need a public IP address to expose more security threats.

We often regard IOT devices as smart objects that can seamlessly interact and exchange data through Internet. Therefore, just as every house needs a postal address, every device needs an IP address for unique identification. The introduction of IPv6, which can provide almost endless IP addresses, seems to further consolidate this idea.

In fact, many IoT devices do not need or should not have IP addresses. The new connection solution optimized for modular and battery-driven sensors no longer follows the old-fashioned OSI protocol stack. Heavy envoy overhead is usually removed to simplify the design of the transceiver and reduce the power consumption per transmission. IoT gateways with IP functions use local wireless links to collect data from a group of sensors and transmit the data to the internet on behalf of sensors. Each of these IoT devices is assigned a unique identifier that is compatible with its built-in wireless link, rather than an IP address.

Cost and energy efficiency are not the only advantages of bypassing TCP/IP connections. In large-scale Internet of Things networks, connecting each device directly to the Internet greatly increases your risk of security vulnerabilities such as denial of service attacks. Ensure that all devices support common encryption protocols such as TLS and SSL, and take additional measures for maintenance and security updates may exceed the company's resources and expertise. If your IoT device is a small sensor and needs to transmit only a small amount of data on a regular basis, it is best to use a non-IP connection.

It is estimated that the number of IoT devices will reach 25.2 billion by 2025, and IoT will continue to exist. Before building, purchasing, or deploying IoT devices, make sure that you are fully aware of the following requirements.