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Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Reader Protocols
E HAVE SEEN HOW A READER COMMUNICATES WITH TAGS, but a reader must also communicate
with the network and the applications and middleware hosted on the network. While
most of the early standardization work has centered on tags and tag protocols, the next
year should see important progress in standardization of reader protocols. This is in keep-
ing with a transition from the Compliance era to the era of the RFID-Enabled Enterprise,
where greater demand for standards-based interfaces will drive procurement decisions
and so drive reader development. An understanding of these protocols will directly help in
configuring middleware and applications as well as in debugging communications
between readers and applications or middleware on the network.
In this chapter we will discuss the general structure all modern reader protocols share.
We’ll also take a look at some specific proprietary protocols that have been developed by
vendors in recent years, a new reader protocol standard developed by EPCglobal, and a
competing standard introduced by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). We will
then discuss what to expect from future reader protocol development.
Parts of a Reader Protocol
Any modern reader protocol must provide certain capabilities to operate in a production
environment. These capabilities together imply a general structure that all reader
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