Realizing the Internet of Things using information-centric networking

Abstract

Nowadays, the Internet connects more objects than people. These devices generate vast amounts of information. Furthermore, identification technologies - such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) - enable the association of information with identifiable objects, not necessarily connected to the Internet. All this information is organized into vertical silos. These silos usually belong to different administrative domains and use their own specific communication protocols. In this paper, we present our vision for a global, all-encompassing Internet of Things (IoT) realized through an integrating architecture relying on information and its identifiers/names. We envision the IoT as the architecture that will interconnect all these silos and will make the information generated by or associated with objects globally accessible. Moreover, we argue that the Information-Centric Networking (ICN) paradigm is the ideal candidate architecture for the realization of that IoT vision. In line with this premise, we propose a research agenda for the realization of a full-fledged ICN-based IoT architecture.