Our Five Senses on Sensors
Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) is credited as the first person to classify our five sense organs: sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing and Immanuel Kant, a famous philosopher from the 1700s said that our knowledge of the outside world depends on our modes of perception. Our highly developed organs of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and the skin on your hand provide the sensing equipment necessary to send that information to the brain. In some cases, one of the sensors might not work properly in the case of the blind or deaf, yet the four other senses are heightened and exceed normal operation to make up for the missing information. Daniel Kish, for example, uses echolocation like a bat to see the imprint of the sound waves as they bounce back. Pretty cool, eh? Today, we're building gadgets that are used in conjunction with or completely taking over the the tasks of the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and hands. Things that were always part of our body are being replaced with micro-chipped things that act like, attach to - or better yet - integrate with our body. Sight: Of course there are security cameras to help us see our homes when we are away and most of us have heard of Google Glass but there are now eyeglasses being prototyped by BMW’s Mini division. They are combining the wearable with the connected car. These glasses communicate with the car via WiFi and offers a heads-up display like no other. While you can still see the real world, the glasses offer an overlay of speed, navigation, backup cameras and more. You can see just how close you are to the curb from the wheel's point of view. You can also look at a street sign and have it come to life with other overlays or additional info. While most of the data is just telemetry for now, engineers are looking to possibly incorporate driving features within the view. This is where IoT gets interesting - where one is used to compliment another. Also, Swiss engineers have developed a camera based on the human retina. Understanding the biology of the real thing, they've made a more efficient camera. Smell: Although there were attempts earlier, in the 1940-50's, Hans Laube created a system called Smell-O-Vision which would emit odors during the movie so the audience could smell what was happening in the movie. It was only used once. GE also developed a system in 1953 that they called Smell-O-Rama. Now you can get a smell app on your phone. ChatPerf is a thumb-drive-sized atomizer that plugs into your mobile device so it can be triggered to release specific odors on command. But those are scents out. Machines that can whiff stuff in have been around awhile. Think of your smoke, carbon-monoxide or radon detectors. Today we have wearable vapor sensors that can smell diabetes. Scientists have figured out how to use a sensor to identify the odor from melanoma to detect this form of skin cancer. Those human skin cells give off an odor that doctors can pick up with a sensor. And scientists in Israel who have already developed a nanotechnology breath analyzer for kidney failure are working on one that can distinguish between the breath of a lung cancer patient verses a healthy exhale. Crazy! Hearing: According to U.K. firm Wifore Consulting, Hearable technology alone will be a $5 billion market by 2018. Roughly the size of the entire wearable market today. Ears are able to capture things like oxygen levels, electrocardiograms, and body temperature. While sound drives the bulk of technology within this space, those ear buds could soon have technology that not only sends sounds but also captures some of your body information. And it is small enough and discrete to wear everywhere rather than carrying a mobile device. Initial uses trend with fitness. Ear buds that play music but also give you feedback on your workout. There are also smart earrings that monitor heart rate and activity. I've always said that there will come a time when we all have IPv6 chips in our ear and we'll just tug the lobe to answer a call. Carol Burnett would be proud. Touch: Want to give a robot the ability to feel? Done. Researchers have developed a flexible sensor able to detect temperature, pressure and humidity simultaneously and a big leap towards imitating the sensing features of the human skin. While still in the early stages, future sensors could be embedded into the "electronic skin" of prosthetics, allowing amputees sense environmental changes. Another is BioTac, a fingertip that can sense force, temperature, and vibration—in some cases better than a human finger. With laser 3D printing, some orthotics can be delivered in hours rather than months. Taste: Sweet, sour, salt and bitter used to be the domain of the tongue. Soon, electronic 'tongues' could be used to monitor the quality control of bottled water. Using chemical sensors, researchers in Texas have demonstrated that the electronic tongue can 'taste' different solutions. The sensors responded to different combinations of the four artificial taste elements with unique color combinations of red, green and blue. This enabled the device to analyze for several different chemical components simultaneously. I've written about smart chopsticks that can detect oils containing unsanitary levels of contamination, a fork that monitors how many bites you take and a smart cup that counts the amount and calories you drink. This is the Internet of Food. Wearables make technology personal and our five senses are what helps us navigate life, gives us perspective. Who would have thought that an individual's perspective would someday become embedded within coded software. ps Related: Wearables + Connected Cars = IoT Heaven Five ways retailers can start using IoT today Lesson: How Do Human Sensors Work? Hearables - the next big thing in wearable tech Human Touch: Sensor Lets Robots 'Feel' They've Got It Licked - Artificial Sensors Can Taste What's In A Complex Mixture Innovative Technology Powers the Wearables Movement My IoT Articles Technorati Tags: iot,wearables,senses,sensors,things,humans,hearables,sight,sound,smell,touch,taste,silva,f5 Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:Wearing Emotions on Your Sleeve...Literally
Imagine if your emotions and feelings could be measured, tracked and included in a data graph. I'm sure you've heard the saying 'wearing your heart on your sleeve' to indicate that someone expresses their emotions freely or exposes their true emotions without caution. This can be good in that you become open and vulnerable when showing your true feelings but can jade areas like composure in situations where you might be frustrated or irritated. I tend to be fairly open with my emotions. There are a few stories about the origin of the saying going back to the Middle Ages. Emperor Claudius II felt unattached men make better warriors so he outlawed marriage. To alleviate some of the grievances, every year during the Roman festival honoring Juno, he'd allow temporary coupling where men drew names to determine who would be their lady friend for the year. The man would wear her name on his sleeve for the festival. Around the same time, when knights performed jousting matches, they'd dedicate their match to a lovely lady of the court. By wearing her hanky around his arm, he was signaling that he was defending her honor. And in Shakespeare's Othello, Iago confesses, For when my outward action doth demonstrate The native act and figure of my heart In complement extern, ’tis not long after But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve For daws to peck at. I am not what I am. – Othello, Act 1, Scene 1, 61–65 Whatever the origin, humans are emotional creatures. We typically make choices based on emotion, even though we'd like to think it was a rational decision. We may try to hide our emotions as to not upset or reveal something to another person. Often called a Poker Face. But imagine if your emotions and feelings could be measured, tracked and included in a data graph. Other than a polygraph. Daydream no more. There are now wearables that track your emotions. This is not your father's old-skool mood ring but devices that read your current emotional state and attempts to sooth and lower stress levels by encouraging deep breaths and relaxation techniques to get you through the haze. Sensors that gather skin temperature, sweat gland activity and blood pulse along with movement gauge your activity level. From that, it generates a graph on your mobile phone so you can see when your stress levels peaked and the mood at the time. You can see real time or over the course of the day. Emotional analysis in your pocket...or sleeve if you got one of those runner's arm band things. I'm sure someone will create a shirt that has color changing sleeve threads depending on a person's emotional state. The Iagonaut. This is not the future but today. A Fitbit captured the moment of a broken heart during a relationship ending phone call. This man was wearing his Fitbit when the unexpected call came and his daily graph tells the whole story: Koby (@iamkoby) shared his heart wrenching moment (and graph) on Twitter and it saturated the internet. The red arrow indicates the moment that the news hit him. Instantly, his heart rate jumped from 72 to 88 beats per minute and stayed high for the rest of the day. Clearly this healthy, athletic person was under duress and if you couldn't tell by the yellow peak marks, he had trouble sleeping that night. Talk about exposing your emotions with technology. Would you share your sleeve with the world? ps Related: Fitbit captures exact moment man's heart breaks The Origins of Wearing Your Heart on Your Sleeve Forget fitness, this wearable tracks your emotions Connecting the Threads The Digital Dress Code Wearables Head to Tail Gartner Says Worldwide Wearable Devices Sales to Grow 18.4 Percent in 2016 Technorati Tags: iot,wearables,emotions,humans,stress,sensors,silva,f5 Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:The Analog Generation
From Baby Boomers to Gen X, Y, & Z, there are certain characteristics that define, at least according to demographers and historians, each generation. Generation X, specifically, might also remember a Rush song called The Analog Kid. While not as frequently played as Tom Sawyer or Subdivisions, it has always been my favorite Rush song. Driving bass, awesome guitar solo, amazing imagery and Peart. I am that Generation. The Analog Generation. With all of our digital things getting connected, including things on and in our body, I started thinking that I'm part of the generation that transitioned from analog to digital. Not that analog or analog signals are disappearing anytime soon, but as a kid, there were way more analog things than digital, that's for sure. Audiophiles will also argue that analog recordings are better at capturing the true representation of sound due to it being continuous, rather than specific values to represent sound, as in the discrete digital. I wondered if I was the only one who figured this out - highly doubtful - so I searched. And actually, there are a few people who have made the connection. One who argues that today's kids, at least his kids, are very analog. They love playing outside, playing board games and other non-digital activities. He talks about the importance of parents giving their children attention in the real world. And the other one specifically talks about the analog things we remember as a kid - records, 8mm, rotary phones, black & white TV, VHS and others verses the CDs, DVDs, iPhones and HD TVs today's kids live with. Some feel that Rush's The Analog Kid is about a more innocent time with less technology in the world, longing for the simpler days. A cautionary tale. One person notes, 'Perhaps Peart's social comment with the two songs is how technology and science creates incredible wonders, but there's a cruel price to pay if there's no heart to guide it.' The other song he references is Digital Man, also on the Signals album. When I hear The Analog Kid it immediately takes me back to 1982 and whatever I was doing in high school. It is interesting that I took my first computer class in high school around that time...while still learning how to type...on a real typewriter. If you remember those, with the little IBM ball to change fonts, you're analog. The last lines of the song are: Too many hands on my time Too many feelings Too many things on my mind When I leave I don't know What I'm hoping to find When I leave I don't know What I'm leaving behind... We are certainly entering a new realm with IoT with a lot of hopes, dreams and ideas of things to come. And while they all might help us automatically adjust home temperatures, become a little healthier, auto drive our car, keep an eye on our home, and cook better dinners, we can't forget that humans are social creatures, not necessarily social media darlings, and our real family, friends and loves are what really matter. We're already forging a new frontier but we must tread carefully. ps Related The Analog Generation Analog vs. Digital Generations Is IoT Hype For Real? Internet of Things OWASP Top 10 The Top 10, Top 10 Predictions for 2015 OK 2015, Now What? The Digital Dress Code Welcome to the The Phygital World Technorati Tags: f5,analog,digital,rush,music,the analog kid,iot,things,sensors,humans,society,generations,silva Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:Internet of Food
For those of you who like to post food pictures, this is something I can see being a benefit. Smart Chopsticks! Yup, you heard that right. Soon you'll be able to poke that dim sum and know if the food is tainted. Baidu, China's internet giant, unveiled them at their annual conference last week. While not ready for the mass market, Baidu says the chopsticks can detect oils containing unsanitary levels of contamination. They predict that you'll be able to detect the origin of oil and water and other foods...and whether they’ve spoiled and their nutritional content. You can hook them up to a smartphone to capture the content. They have a video which shows them dipping the chopsticks in olive oil and getting a 'good' reading and then doing the same with recycled oil and getting a 'bad' reading. As of today, the chopsticks only measure the freshness of cooking oil but future chopsticks also will be able to measure PH levels, temperature and calories. Of course I did a little digging to see what other utensil type things have gotten smarter. At CES 2013, Hapi Labs shared their Hapi Fork. A little bigger that your regular fork but after a charge, it'll monitor how many bites of food you take and at what rate. If you try to stuff your mouth with more than 1 bite every 10 seconds, the fork will vibrate to tell you to slow down. With USB, you can upload the data to track your eating or share with friends along with the plate in front of you. How about an instrument which tells you when you're about to bite the inside of your mouth? Then we got the Smart Cup, which counts the number of liquid calories you are two-fisting. Vessyl is a cup designed to automatically determine what’s been poured into it and track what you’re drinking in real-time. Whatever you pour into it, coffee, soda, juice, the sensors break it down to the molecular level to identify the beverage. It can even differentiate brands. Imagine the Pepsi Challenge in the one of these. It gives calorie count plus total grams of sugar, fat, protein, sodium and caffeine. You then connect to the app and it stores the drink along with making suggestions on healthier choices. Bad Bourbon...but so good. I know there are already smart refrigerators but I wonder what they'll be in the future. I was thinking about a fridge that had Rubik's cube type inside and based on whatever the sensors pick (smelly, past date, UPC, recall, whatever), those cubes move to the front so you can see what's about to spoil or needs to be eaten. How many times have you pulled a few things out and suddenly seen the science experiment covered in plastic wrap? This Internet of Things is branching in so many directions and it's interesting, at least to me, just how many items are starting to get sensors. The food supply has had it's share of recalls, contaminations, cover ups and other challenges and smart utensils really could be a life saver for some people, especially with food allergies. For me, it would be pretty cool to stick some food to find out if there is any lactose in it and then predict how soon I'll be bending over in stomach pain. That's smart. ps Related: 'Smart Chopsticks' Can Detect Bad Food Is Your Food Safe? New ‘Smart Chopsticks’ Can Tell Vessyl: A Smart Cup That Counts Liquid Calories CES 2013: Smart Utensils Remind You to Chew Your Food Is IoT Hype For Real? Internet of Things OWASP Top 10 Welcome to the The Phygital World Technorati Tags: iot,things,chopsticks,utensils,smart,sensors,nouns,silva,f5,food Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:Internet of Things OWASP Top 10
The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is focused on improving the security of software. Their mission is to make software security visible, so that individuals and organizations worldwide can make informed decisions about true software security risks and their OWASP Top 10 provides a list of the 10 Most Critical Security Risks. For each risk it provides a description, example vulnerabilities, example attacks, guidance on how to avoid and references to OWASP and other related resources. Many of you are familiar with their Top 10 Most Critical Web Application Security Risks. They provide the list for awareness and guidance on some of the critical web applications security areas to address. It is a great list and many security vendors point to it to show the types of attacks that can be mitigated. Now the Internet of Things (IoT) has its own OWASP Top 10. If you've lived under a rock for the past year, IoT or as I like to call it, the Internet of Nouns, is this era where everyday objects - refrigerators, toasters, thermostats, cars, sensors, etc - are connected to the internet and can send and receive data. There have been tons of articles covering IoT over the last 6 months or so, including some of my own. The OWASP Internet of Things (IoT) Top 10 is a project designed to help vendors who are interested in making common appliances and gadgets network/Internet accessible. The project walks through the top ten security problems that are seen with IoT devices, and how to prevent them. The OWASP Internet of Things Top 10 - 2014 is as follows: 1 Insecure Web Interface 2 Insufficient Authentication/Authorization 3 Insecure Network Services 4 Lack of Transport Encryption 5 Privacy Concerns 6 Insecure Cloud Interface 7 Insecure Mobile Interface 8 Insufficient Security Configurability 9 Insecure Software/Firmware 10 Poor Physical Security You can click on each to get a detailed view on the threat agents, attack vectors, security weaknesses, along with the technical and business impacts. They also list any privacy concerns along with example attack scenarios. Good stuff! ps Related: The Icebox Cometh The Applications of Our Lives Standards for 'Things' Securing the Internet of Things: is the web already breaking up? 4 things that will happen in the Internet of Things space in 2014 Tech's brightest unconvinced by internet of things OWASP Internet of Things Top 10 Technorati Tags: iot,things,owasp,security,top10,privacy,silva,f5,nouns Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:Is IoT Hype For Real?
It is only fitting that the 20th anniversary of the Gartner Hype Cycle has the Internet of Things right at the top of the coaster. IoT is currently at the peak of Inflated Expectations. The Gartner Hype Cycle give organizations an assessment of the maturity, business benefit and future direction of more than 2,000 technologies. The theme for this year's Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle is Digital Business. As you can see, being at the top really means that there is a ton of media coverage about the technology, so much so that it starts to get a little silly. Everyone is talking about it, including this author. What you can also so is the downward trend to follow. This is the trough of disillusionment. Gamification, Mobile Health Monitoring and Big Data all fall into this area. It means that they already hit their big hype point but doesn't necessarily mean that it's over. The slope of enlightenment shows technologies that are finally mature enough to actually have reasonable expectations about. Each of the technologies also have a time line of when it'll mature. For IoT, it looks like 5 to 10 years. So while we're hearing all the noise about IoT now, society probably won't be fully immersed for another decade...even though we'll see gradual steps toward it over the next few years. Once all our people, places and things are connected, you can also get a sense of what else is coming in the Innovation Trigger area. Come the 2025 time frame, things like Smart Robots, Human Augmentation and a Brain Computer Interface could be the headlines of the day. Just imagine, instead of having to type this blog out on a keyboard, I could simply (and wirelessly) connect my brain chip to the computer and just think this. Hey, Stop reading my mind!! ps Related: Gartner's 2014 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Maps the Journey to Digital Business Chart of the Week: The hype cycle of emerging technologies The Internet of Things and DNS F5 Predicts: Internet of Things Drives Demand for 'Social Intelligence' Internet of Things OWASP Top 10 The Icebox Cometh Technorati Tags: iot,things,sensors,nouns,gartner,hypecycle,media,silva,f5The IoT Ready Platform
Over the last couple months, in between some video coverage for events, I've been writing a series of IoT stories. From the basic What are These "Things”? and IoT Influence on Society to the descriptive IoT Effect on Applications and the IoT Ready Infrastructure. I thought it only fair to share how F5 can play within an IoT infrastructure. Because F5 application services share a common control plane—the F5 platform—we’ve simplified the process of deploying and optimizing IoT application delivery services. With the elastic power of Software Defined Application Services (SDAS), you can rapidly provision IoT application services across the data center and into cloud computing environments, reducing the time and costs associated with deploying new applications and architectures. The beauty of SDAS is that it can provide the global services to direct the IoT devices to the most appropriate data center or hybrid cloud depending on the request, context, and application health. Customers, employees, and the IoT devices themselves receive the most secure and fastest experience possible. F5's high-performance services fabric supports traditional and emerging underlay networks. It can deployed a top traditional IP and VLAN-based networks, works with SDN overlay networks using NVGRE or VXLAN (as well as a variety of less well-known overlay protocols) and integrates with SDN network fabrics such as those from Cisco/Insieme, Arista and BigSwitch among others. Hardware, Software or Cloud The services fabric model enables consolidation of services onto a common platform that can be deployed on hardware, software or in the cloud. This reduces operational overhead by standardizing management as well as deployment processes to support continuous delivery efforts. By sharing service resources and leveraging fine-grained multi-tenancy, the cost of individual services is dramatically reduced, enabling all IoT applications - regardless of size - to take advantage of services that are beneficial to their security, reliability and performance. The F5 platform: Provides the network security to protect against inbound attacks Offloads SSL to improve the performance of the application servers Not only understands the application but also know when it is having problems Ensures not only the best end user experience but also quick and efficient data replication F5 Cloud solutions can automate and orchestrate the deployment of IoT application delivery services across both traditional and cloud infrastructures while also managing the dynamic redirection of workloads to the most suitable location. These application delivery services ensure predictable IoT experiences, replicated security policy, and workload agility. F5 BIG-IQ™ Cloud can federate management of F5 BIG-IP® solutions across both traditional and cloud infrastructures, helping organizations deploy and manage IoT delivery services in a fast, consistent, and repeatable manner, regardless of the underlying infrastructure. In addition, BIG-IQ Cloud integrates or interfaces with existing cloud orchestration engines such as VMware vCloud Director to streamline the overall process of deploying applications. Extend, Scale - and Secure F5 Cloud solutions offer a rapid Application Delivery Network provisioning solution, drastically reducing the lead times for expanding IoT delivery capabilities across data centers, be they private or public. As a result, organizations can efficiently: Extend data centers to the cloud to support IoT deployments Scale IoT applications beyond the data center when required. Secure and accelerate IoT connections to the cloud For maintenance situations, organizations no longer need to manually redirect traffic by configuring applications. Instead, IoT applications are proactively redirected to an alternate data center prior to maintenance. For continuous DDoS protection, F5 Silverline DDoS Protection is a service delivered via the F5 Silverline cloud-based platform that provides detection and mitigation to stop even the largest of volumetric DDoS attacks from reaching your IoT network. The BIG-IP platform is application and location agnostic, meaning the type of application or where the application lives really does not matter. As long as you tell the BIG-IP platform where to find the IoT application, the BIG-IP platform will deliver it. Bringing it all together, F5 Synthesis enables cloud and application providers as well as mobile network operators the architectural framework necessary to ensure the performance, reliability and security of IoT applications. Connected devices are here to stay—forcing us to move forward into this brave new world where almost everything generates data traffic. While there’s much to consider, proactively addressing these challenges and adopting new approaches for enabling an IoT-ready network will help organizations chart a clearer course toward success. An IoT-ready environment enables IT to begin taking advantage of this societal shift without a wholesale rip-and-replace of existing technology. It also provides the breathing room IT needs to ensure that the coming rush of connected devices does not cripple the infrastructure. This process ensures benefits will be realized without compromising on the operational governance required to ensure availability and security of IoT network, data, and application resources. It also means IT can manage IoT services instead than boxes. However an IoT ready infrastructure is constructed, it is a transformational journey for both IT and the business. It is not something that should be taken lightly or without a long-term strategy in place. When done properly, F5-powered IoT ready infrastructure can bring significant benefits to an organization and its people. ps Related: The Digital Dress Code Is IoT Hype For Real? What are These "Things”? IoT Influence on Society IoT Effect on Applications CloudExpo 2014: The DNS of Things Intelligent DNS Animated Whiteboard The Internet of Me, Myself & I Technorati Tags: f5,iot,things,sensors,silverline,big-ip,scale,sdas,synthesis,infrastructure Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:IoT Ready Infrastructure
IoT applications will come in all shapes and sizes but no matter the size, availability is paramount to support both customers and the business. The most basic high-availability architecture is the typical three-tier design. A pair of ADCs in the DMZ terminates the connection. They in turn intelligently distribute the client request to a pool (multiple) of IoT application servers which then query the database servers for the appropriate content. Each tier has redundant servers so in the event of a server outage, the others take the load and the system stays available. This is a tried and true design for most operations and provides resilient application availability, IoT or not, within a typical data center. But fault tolerance between two data centers is even more reliable than multiple servers in a single location, simply because that one data center is a single point of failure. Cloud: The Enabler of IoT The cloud has become one of the primary enablers for IoT. Within the next five years, more than 90% of all IoT data will be hosted on service provider platforms as cloud computing reduces the complexity of supporting IoT “Data Blending”. In order to achieve or even maintain continuous IoT application availability and keep up with the pace of new IoT application rollouts, organizations must explore expanding their data center options to the cloud, to ensure IoT applications are always available. Having access to cloud resources provides organizations with the agility and flexibility to quickly provision IoT services. The Cloud offers organizations a way to manage IoT services rather than boxes along with just-in-time provisioning. Cloud enables IT as a Service, just as IoT is a service, along with the flexibility to scale when needed. Integrating cloud-based IoT resources into the architecture requires only a couple of pieces: connectivity, along with awareness of how those resources are being used. The connectivity between a data center and the cloud is generally referred to as a cloud bridge. The cloud bridge connects the two data center worlds securely and provides a network compatibility layer that “bridges” the two networks. This provides a transparency that allows resources in either environment to communicate without concern for the underlying network topology. Once a connection is established and network bridging capabilities are in place, resources provisioned in the cloud can be non-disruptively added to the data center-hosted pools. From there, load is distributed per the ADC platform’s configuration for the resource, such as an IoT application. By integrating your enterprise data center to external clouds, you make the cloud a secure extension of the enterprise’s IoT network. This enterprise-to-cloud network connection should be encrypted and optimized for performance and bandwidth, thereby reducing the risks and lowering the effort involved in migrating your IoT workloads to cloud. Maintain seamless delivery This hybrid infrastructure approach, including cloud resources, for IoT deployments not only allows organizations to distribute their IoT applications and services when it makes sense but also provides global fault tolerance to the overall system. Depending on how an organization’s disaster recovery infrastructure is designed, this can be an active site, a hot standby, a leased hosting space, a cloud provider, or some other contained compute location. As soon as that IoT server, application, or even location starts to have trouble, an organization can seamlessly maneuver around the issue and continue to deliver its services to the devices. Advantages for a range of industries The various combinations of hybrid infrastructure types can be as diverse as the IoT situations that use them. Enterprises probably already have some level of hybrid, even if it is a mix of owned space plus SaaS. They typically prefer to keep sensitive assets in-house but have started to migrate workloads to hybrid data centers. Financial industries have different requirements than retail. Retail will certainly need a boost to their infrastructure as more customers will want to test IoT devices in the store. The Service Provider industry is also well on their way to building out IoT ready infrastructures and services. A major service provider we are working with is in the process of deploying BIG-IP Virtual Editions to provide ADC functionality needed for the scale and flexibility of the carrier’s connected car project. Virtualized solutions are required for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) to enable the agility and elasticity necessary to support the IoT infrastructure demands. ps Related: The Digital Dress Code Is IoT Hype For Real? What are These "Things”? IoT Influence on Society IoT Effect on Applications CloudExpo 2014: The DNS of Things Intelligent DNS Animated Whiteboard The Internet of Me, Myself & I Technorati Tags: f5,iot,things,infrastructure,nfv,sensors,cloud,silva Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:IoT Effect on Applications
As more applications are needed to run those Things, traditional infrastructure concerns like scale and reliability will become paramount. Additional challenges with identity and access, improving the user experience, and the need for faster provisioning of services could overwhelm IT departments. A robust, scalable and intelligent infrastructure will be necessary to handle the massive traffic growth. IT professionals are tasked with designing and building the infrastructure that’s ready for the challenges that lie ahead, including IoT. But many of today’s traditional architectures will buckle under the increasing demand of all the connected devices. According to IDC, the rate at which applications double in the enterprise is every four years. This is likely to be cut in half as more IoT devices need applications supporting them and organizations need to be ready for the deluge. The Domain Name System (DNS) is the most likely method for connected devices to locate needed services, and it’s potentially the means by which people will locate the devices themselves. There might be other schemas in the planning process, but those would require the adoption of a new technology naming standard, which would be costly, slow and highly unlikely. Clearly, security must also be present since Iot has the potential to weave vulnerabilities throughout the system. Unless organizations remain proactive, the ubiquity of connected devices presents a gold mine for attackers. Outpacing attackers in our current threat landscape will require more resources in order to minimize risk. Organizations will need to continue to harden our own infrastructures and look to cloud services like DoS mitigation to lessen the effects of attacks. At the same time, the explosion of embedded devices may well be the event that drives more mainstream IPv6 adoption. There are several advantages to IPv6 such as a large namespace, address self-configuration, and the potential to remove Network Address Translation (NAT) problems. The data center will require some planning to embrace this shift. Components such as routers, firewalls, and application delivery controllers will need to be IPv6-ready, capable of understanding the protocols and data that devices will use to communicate. To ensure security, intelligent routing, and analytics, networking layers will need to be fluent in the language your devices use. Understanding these protocols within the network will allow traffic to be secured, prioritized, and routed accordingly. Recognizing and prioritizing these messages will enable better scale and manageability of the onslaught of device traffic and data. Intelligence will also be needed to categorize what data needs attention (like a health monitor alert) and what doesn’t (temperature is good). According to TechTarget, to ensure high availability of IoT services, enterprises must consider boosting traffic management and monitoring. This will both mitigate business continuity risks, and prevent potential losses. From a project planning standpoint, organizations need to do capacity planning and watch the growth rate of the network so that the increased demand for the required bandwidth can be met. ps Related The Digital Dress Code Is IoT Hype For Real? What are These "Things”? IoT Influence on Society CloudExpo 2014: The DNS of Things Intelligent DNS Animated Whiteboard The Internet of Me, Myself & I Technorati Tags: devices,f5,iot,m2m,security,sensors,silva,things,wearables,dns,applicatons Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:IoT Influence on Society
”Things” and the applications/services that support them are changing the way we live. Wearables in the sports and health sectors will grow to nearly 170 million devices by 2017 — an annual growth rate of 41 percent. Specific to the enterprise, if you thought the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) craze was a headache, just wait until button cameras, smart watches, fitness trackers, and connected glasses are a daily occurrence in the office. Workplace wearables will be a huge challenge in the coming years as more devices, clothing and pretty much any 'thing' with a chip or sensor become commonplace in society. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in The Wearable Future report found that 77% of respondents thought that a top benefit of wearable technology is the potential to make employees more productive and efficient. If the technology is simple to use and integrates with other devices, that should boost productivity and lift profits. Industries that could benefit immediately from the wearable market include: Entertainment will be more 'immersive and fun' Social Media gets real time updates from clothes Gaming can be more visually and physically engaging Advertisers will also want that space someone’s back Healthcare will track vitals Retail could offer “pleasant, efficient” shopping experiences Clothing is just one example of many. Organizations will also be able to manage assets and office building more efficiently. Imagine the connected home automation today, but geared toward commercial properties. Security, HVAC, assets, lighting, employee access and so forth is all handled by sensors and monitors. Smart cities are already being built with IoT on a metropolis scale. Energy, environment, street lights, sanitation, water supply, transportation and other civic related functions are all automatically controlled by meters. The automotive industry is also taking advantage of sensors with self-driving cars, in car Wi-Fi, seamless integration with mobile phones, car to car communications, software updates and even their own in-car apps for streaming entertainment, navigation and other connected activities. By all accounts, everything that is a noun – a person, place or thing – at some point, will have or wear a sensor/actuator/IP-chip that gathers some sort of data and all that traffic is headed for a data center somewhere. The digital society has emerged. ps Related The Digital Dress Code Is IoT Hype For Real? What are These "Things”? CloudExpo 2014: The DNS of Things Intelligent DNS Animated Whiteboard The Internet of Me, Myself & I Technorati Tags: iot,things,wearables,sensors,clothes,society,silva,f5 Connect with Peter: Connect with F5:
