Behind every device connected to the internet of things (IoT), there exists the hugely important standard of internet protocol (IP) end-to-end. But why is it so important?
One of the biggest calls to action from those working on the IP building blocks of the very fabric of our connected world has been the need to rapidly shift from IPv4 to IPv6.
Having first been standardised in the early 1990s, IPv4 has run its course in a world of billions of devices as the very nature of its design means it can only have 4,294,967,296 individual addresses at any one time, compared with 340 undecillion possibilities in IPv6.
Working on such matters is the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which has defined the standards that comprise IP, and takes a variety of requests for comments (RFC) and then synthesises and layers a network solution for everyone online.
Driving this is the IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area Networks (6LoWPAN), which was specifically created from a working group of the IETF to get low-power devices with limited processing capabilities into the world of IoT.
IP also has the advantage of being incredibly versatile in whatever application it is asked to support, from the low-end, right up to heavy data use with no let-off in performance.
To explain in greater detail is Intel’s senior IoT solutions architect, Paweł Ostropolski, who worked with Think Visual to create this three-minute explainer video.
Connected devices image via Shutterstock
