The first time I heard the term ‘The Internet of Things’ (IoT), I thought I had made a mistake and somehow missed out a portion of a sentence that talked about the internet and an unrelated thing. It turned out to be a good thing though, as the term stayed in my head till I could find a way to figure it out.
It is important to understand what IoT is all about. Considering how vast its scope is, everyone can look at it differently. Kevin Ashton, Cofounder and Executive Director of the Auto-ID Center at MIT, first mentioned the Internet of Things in a presentation he made to Procter & Gamble. He has explained the concept and potential of IoT in a very simple, effective way:
“Today computers -- and, therefore, the Internet -- are almost wholly dependent on human beings for information. Nearly all of the roughly 50 petabytes (a petabyte is 1,024 terabytes) of data available on the Internet were first captured and created by human beings by typing, pressing a record button, taking a digital picture or scanning a bar code.
The problem is, people have limited time, attention and accuracy -- all of which means they are not very good at capturing data about things in the real world. If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things -- using data they gathered without any help from us -- we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling and whether they were fresh or past their best.”
For IoT to function, everything (animals, people, appliances etc.) has to be provided with a unique identifier and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. IPv4 is the Internet Protocol that is used to route most of the traffic on the Internet. The IPv4 address field is a 32 bit field and that brings with it a certain set of limitations. There are nearly 4.3 billion IP addresses available in this space and they are almost exhausted now. IPv6 was developed in the late 90s by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to address this issue. This scheme has more than 7.9×10^28 times as many addresses. This would easily tackle the growing demand of Internet connected devices. This enormous increase in address space is an important factor in the development of the Internet of Things. According to Steve Leibson, who identifies himself as “occasional docent at the Computer History Museum,” the address space expansion means that we could “assign an IPV6 address to every atom on the surface of the earth, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths.” In other words, humans could easily assign an IP address to every "thing" on the planet.
It is evident that the Internet of Things is a very complex and large scale process. The lack of address space is just one issue which has been resolved. Security and privacy issues along with the methods of indexing and storing humongous amounts of data need to be tackled.
Nonetheless, the implication is clear. We are heading towards a world where your environment knows you as much as you know it. Home automation, Google cabs that know your urgent appointments and a grocery store that knows your fridge is out of milk are not out of a fiction novel anymore. They are out there in the world you and I live in. The next wave of technological revolution is just around the corner and we are lucky to be a part of it. The Internet of Things will play a key role in paving the way to achieving a perfect environment. We, as a techno centric community, shall realize our goals through the path lit up bright and clear by the Internet of Things!
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