Rethinking the Internet of Things: A Scalable Approach to Connecting Everything

Introduction

I didn’t set out to develop a new architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT). Rather, I was thinking about the implications of control and scheduling within machine social networks in the context of Metcalfe’s Law. The coming tsunami of machine-to-machine interconnections could yield tremendous flows of information – and knowledge.

Once we free the machine social network (comprised of sensors and an unimaginable number of other devices) from the drag of human interaction, there is tremendous potential for creating autonomous communities of machines that require only occasional interaction with, or reporting to, humans.

The conventional wisdom is that the expansive address space of IPv6 solves the IoT problem of myriad end devices. ...