Study Report on a Framework for Cloud Inter-connection toward the Realization of IoT
draft-baba-iot-interconnection-00
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| Authors | Hiroyuki BABA , Izaya Miyake , Jun Matsumura , Yoshiki Ishida | ||
| Last updated | 2018-07-02 | ||
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draft-baba-iot-interconnection-00
Internet Research Task Force H. Baba
Internet-Draft The University of Tokyo
Intended status: Informational I. Miyake
Expires: January 3, 2019 IoT Square Inc.
J. Matsumura
BizMobile Inc.
Y. Ishida
Japan Network Enabler Corporation
July 2, 2018
Study Report on a Framework for Cloud Inter-connection toward the
Realization of IoT
draft-baba-iot-interconnection-00
Abstract
This paper describes issues for solutions through cloud inter-
connection to structural problems, which are called as "silo effects"
found in cloud-connected electric home appliances, housing equipment
and sensors in the face of increasingly accelerated connection of
them. Specifically, this paper explains an inter-connection
agreement considered to be required for enhancement of cloud inter-
connection, what performance guarantee as well as IoT supervising and
management should be, necessity of inter-connection HUB which is able
to provide inter-connection amongst the preponderance of private
cloud groups.
Status of This Memo
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This Internet-Draft will expire on January 3, 2019.
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Copyright Notice
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Draft Framework for Cloud Inter-connection . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Interconnection Agreement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. IoT Device Operation Confirmation and Monitoring . . . . . . 5
5. Interconnection HUB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
8. Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
9. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1. Introduction
To date, based on the results of interviews with "Things" companies,
the authors of this paper, the Autors, issued a Problem Statement on
IoT [1], and reported on an experiment of WebAPI [2]. With further
interviewing and experiments, various requirements specification on a
base for securing cloud inter-connection in the anticipated IoT
society become clearer.
Currently, the use of various connected devices, hereinafter "IoT
Devices" is largely expected to become a using scene of IoT, and such
IoT Device manufacturers operates their private cloud groups, the
"Cloud", where IoT Devices are connected one after another. It
depends on the manufactures whether API of one cloud is open to a
third party or whether the cloud remains closed just for itself just
like a "silo". However, it is expected that API be open by
manufacturers in charge to third parties in the near future and a
large variety of values shall be created through cloud inter-
connection of IoT Devices that are connected to the other cloud
groups with a similar structure. Several cloud inter-connection
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services, enabling one cloud with aforementioned IoT Devices to
connect with another cloud with IoT Devices, have already been
provided.
Thus, by combining cloud-connected IoT Devices, or "connected
Things", just like toy blocks being built freely through cloud inter-
connection, the era for creating a variety of benefits for users
seems to approach us.
As far as users select and handle connected Things on their own
response, there are not any significant issues. However, those whom
you cannot expect IT literacy like elder people should be able to get
access to benefits from IoT. If we stand on such an assumption,
there seem to be many open issues.
The Authors conducted interviews with 9 market players including IoT
service providers and those who were preparing to provide IoT
services and undertook research and summarized issues that those
players felt with regard to cloud inter-connection. In parallel with
other researching experience, we discussed on what framework would be
required for doing IoT service provider businesses at smart houses.
This paper outlines the findings from such discussions.
2. Draft Framework for Cloud Inter-connection
Not assuming the style where users enjoy combination of the use of
IoT Devices like DIY but assuming the one where so called service
providers offer IoT services to users on a "do-it-for-me (DIFM)"
manner, issues different from DIY style become more patent in the
light of responsibility for customers and business continuity. Those
issues are well diversified but may be summarized into three core
categories as follows:
(1) Inter-connection Agreement
Commercial cloud inter-connection requires some kind of contracts
without any doubt. Such contracting procedures are very common in
the Internet market. However, manufacturers of home appliances
and housing equipment have no experience and they feel worried.
(2) Operation Confirmation and Operation Monitoring of IoT Devices
Once being cloud-connected, it is necessary that not products of
one manufacture but also ones made by others are operated with
commands sent out of one's cloud server. At the development stage
of services and during operation of the services, the operation
monitoring of one's IoT Devices being connected with other's cloud
group just with commands of one's.
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(3) Inter-connection Infrastructure
Currently a large number of manufacturers proceed with activities
in getting appliances and equipment that used to operate on a
standalone basis connected to the Internet. Those pieces of
appliances and equipment are independent of each other, namely
"silos". Therefore, in case of connecting all those pieces with
one another, the number of ways to connect needs to be N(N-1)/2.
To do this, much resources shall be required. As was seen in
telephone and the Internet, if HUBs connecting with one another
are put in place, this issue would be less cumbersome to some
extent.
The framework, comprising of above three points, shall be explained
in details in the following chapter.
3. Interconnection Agreement
In the era of IoT, it is desirable to facilitate contracting between
businesses smoothly by preparing a boilerplate format for an
interconnection agreement in advance. As described in the previous
chapter, because of the lack of experience in home appliances and
housing equipment manufacturers, needless to say, any guidelines or
formats would give great comfort to them. The benefits from an
interconnection agreement are to define responsibility of each
contracting party and clarify consent of the parties.
For example, manufacturers of gas cookers have been working on
operational linkage between a gas cooker and air conditioner in order
to harness the increase of room temperature. Possibly a universal
remote controller may be linked with a gas cooker and then the user
can of course operate an air conditioner with the gas cooker
controller. However, unless there is consent from the manufacturer
of the air conditioner on this link operation, the gas cooker
manufacturer seems to hesitate to pursue this due to his feeling that
this is not a fair business behavior.
Following precedents in the Internet, the contents of the
interconnection agreement include demarcation of responsibility,
procedures in operation and maintenance, cost allocation, technical
specifications, and general prohibitions. In addition to such
contents, however, the interconnection agreement becomes
significantly valuable by proving that participating parties formally
agree upon commercial terms of cloud inter-connection.
Of course, the agreement stipulates terms on malfunctioning of IoT
Devices. For example, there is a structure where an energy
management application located in a cloud group of lighting equipment
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of Manufacturer A gives a command to a cloud group of air
conditioning equipment of Manufacturer B. By chance, one air
conditioner starts malfunctioning and the user may call a customer
service of Manufacturer A that provides DIFM energy management
services to the user. In this case, problems are 1) how the fault
can be isolated and 2) how this user's report can be transferred to
Manufacturer B if the fault is identified to come from the other
service provider, namely Manufacturer B.
In case of one manufacture Authors interviewed with, regarding 1)
above, the provider asks the user confirm the lighting operation by
its universal remote controller. If operates, the manufacturer
process the user's report for the moment as a problem of Manufacturer
A. If not operates, the user report could be handled as a problem of
Manufacturer B. Manufacture A does not escalate the user's report to
Manufacture B in case of 2) above. At a glance, this behavior of
Manufacture A may not be sincere, but this is related with the
treatment of personal information. Nowadays, manufacturers collect
personal information of the user only in case they really need such
information. Following this information policy, if a lighting remote
controller does not operate the air conditioner, problem of
Manufacture B is suspected. However, Manufacturer A does not ask the
user for his/her personal information. Instead, they ask the user to
call Manufacturer B once again.
Because there are very extraordinary restrictions on transfer of
personal information among service providers in many countries,
aforementioned treatment of users has to prevail. Contrarily this
treatment is totally opposite to a direction of the one-stop services
that users generally look for.
Regarding cloud inter-connection, several opinions on issues in
business continuity were heard. Namely, in case of formulating DIFM
services containing services provided by others, the DIFM service
providers are concerned with adverse impacts of the suspension or
cancellation of other providers' services on his/her DIFM services.
The interconnection agreement does not make other providers promise
to continue the provision of the services to the DIFM providers.
However, the agreement possibly defines responsibility of advance
notification and a certain lead time for countermeasure formulation.
Therefore, the interconnection agreement is meaningful in this
regard.
4. IoT Device Operation Confirmation and Monitoring
As was mentioned before, it is prerequisite to secure function of
operation confirmation of related IoT Devices in DIFM business in its
services development and in processing claims of users during service
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provision. Even in the experimental service development stage, it is
often necessary to identify where a fault occurs and how to isolate
the fault in case that IoT Device does not perform as it is expected.
This articulates an issue related to inter-operability which is the
purpose of inter-connection. Especially, fault identification and
capacity to recover the identified faults are very significant
issues.
In interviewing with IoT service providers, their capacity to process
users' claims involves the following three functions.
1) Monitoring fault incidents;
2) Fault isolation; and
3) On-site fault recovery capability
As of now, generally operational confirmation and monitoring
functions comprise the following items.
1) Alive monitoring of IoT Devices through confirmation on ping
signal communications;
2) Understanding of fault situations and history by remote reading
of equipment log; and
3) Alarm monitoring beyond pre-set threshold levels such as data
traffic volume
However, if the number of IoT Devices increases rapidly from now on,
a set of aforementioned simple monitoring functions may not be
efficient in terms of recovery capacity and cost competitiveness. It
is necessary to re-examine the scalability of current operation and
monitoring systems carefully and introduce required new technologies
for effective operational monitoring of widely proliferated IoT
Devices from now on.
5. Interconnection HUB
When a large number of manufacturers start the operation of
independent cloud groups, their mutual interconnection becomes more
and more complex as is mentioned before. Telephone and the Internet
are supported with so called interconnection gateway switch and IX
structures, achieving inter-connection among service providers.
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+---------------+
[Pattern 1] | IoT HUB |
+------+ +--------------+ | |
| IoT +----+ Private |App|+----+| Cloud | |
|Device| | Cloud | || Driver| |
+------+ +--------------+ | |
<----------------+ | |
Inter-Cloud| | |
Interconnection| | |
<----------------+ | |
+------+ +--------------+ | |
| IoT +----+ Private |App|+----+| Cloud | |
|Device| | Cloud | || Driver| |
+------+ +--------------+ | |
Application-Cloud Interconnection
<---------------------------------> [Pattern 4]
| | +---------------+
<---------------+ | | Web |+---+ Application |
Device-Cloud| | | API || | (B2C/Service) |
Interconnection| | | +---------------+
<---------------+ | |
[Pattern 2] | |
+------+ | |
| IoT +------------------------+| Thing | |
|Device| || Driver| |
+------+ | |
| |
[Pattern 3] | |
+------+ +-------------+ | |
| IoT | | Gateway | | |
|Device+-----+| Thing | +----+ |
| | || Driver| | | |
+------+ +-------------+ | |
| Database |
| Directory |
| Description |
+-------++------+
||
+-------++------+
| Sekisyo |
| Service[1] |
+---------------+
Figure 1: Structure of IoT HUB.
Of course, in the IoT world, similar arrangements to connect among
cloud groups are possible. There is one difference from the era of
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telephone and the Internet. This is no existence of inter-connection
communication protocols such as SS#7 and BGP4 here.
During the interviews with the providers, no one mentioned the
necessity of standardization of inter-cloud interconnection
communication protocols. Contrarily, many providers told that they
would utilize whatever they can use in an extremely businesslike
manner. Actually already existing inter-cloud interconnection
services do not specially focus on this issue. So it is considered
that interconnection HUBs would necessarily be structured in way HUBs
accommodate various different kinds of protocols. In order to
connect different protocols that respective cloud group utilize with
one another, the HUB side needs to be equipped with a driver module
matching each of the cloud groups to be connected. Authors call this
as a "printer driver model."
And according to a research of Authors, interconnection services
already put in place tend to take similar patterns such as inter-
cloud interconnection and application-cloud connection. Therefore it
is necessary to proceed with interconnections with different patterns
in order to make it more universal.
Service providers as a bussiness that Authors are considering are at
least the following four patterns. The University of Tokyo continues
with its research, recognizing requirements for infrastructures for
interconnection of those items.
[Pattern 1] Service providers with their private cloud connecting
with IoT devices,
[Pattern 2] preparing device drivers to IoT devices,
[Pattern 3] supplying gateways which connect IoT devices, and
[Pattern 4] application and service providers with with others IoT
devices.
6. Security Considerations
Regarding security, pattern 2 of service providers specified in
Chapter 5 may contain some vulnerability and thus precaution is
required.
7. Privacy Considerations
Regarding privacy, Chapter 2 touches upon concerns on privacy among
inter-connected service providers in case of fault isolation after
IoT Device malfunctioning.
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8. Acknowledgement
This paper contains findings of the study funded by the Ministry of
Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan as well as research
activities of IoT Committee of Internet Association Japan. We hereby
touch upon such facts and show our gratitude to those who relate to
the study and committee activities.
9. Normative References
[1] Baba, H., Ishida, Y., Amatsu, T., Kunitake, K., and K.
Maeda, "Problems in and among industries for the prompt
realization of IoT and safety considerations", 2018,
<draft-baba-iot-problems>.
[2] Baba, H., Ishida, Y., Amatsu, T., Masuda, H., Ogura, S.,
and K. Kunitake, "Report on Problem Solving Experiment for
Realization of Web-API-based IoT", 2018, <draft-baba-iot-
webapi>.
Authors' Addresses
Hiroyuki Baba
The University of Tokyo
Institute of Industrial Science
4-6-1 Komaba
Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8505
Japan
Email: hbaba@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Izaya Miyake
IoT Square Inc.
Hibiya Parkfront.
2-1-6, Uchisaiwai-cho
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0011
Japan
Email: izmiyake@iot-sq.com
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Jun Matsumura
BizMobile Inc.
Kanda Business Cube 3F
5-1, Kandatomiyama-cho
Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0043
Japan
Email: jumatsum@bizmobile.co.jp
Yoshiki Ishida
Japan Network Enabler Corporation
7F S-GATE Akasaka-Sanno.
1-8-1 Akasaka
Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052
Japan
Email: ishida@jpne.co.jp
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