Authors:
Felix W. Baumann
1
;
Ulrich Odefey
2
;
Sebastian Hudert
2
;
Michael Falkenthal
3
and
Uwe Breitenbücher
3
Affiliations:
1
TWT GmbH Science & Innovation and University of Stuttgart, Germany
;
2
TWT GmbH Science & Innovation, Germany
;
3
University of Stuttgart, Germany
Keyword(s):
Tor Network, IoT Connectivity, Internet of Things, Addressing.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Cloud Computing
;
Collaboration and e-Services
;
Data Engineering
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Mobile Software and Services
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Services Science
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
;
Software Engineering
;
Software Engineering Methods and Techniques
;
Telecommunications
;
Web Services
;
Wireless Information Networks and Systems
Abstract:
For Internet of Things (IoT) devices and cyber-physical systems (CPS), it is required to connect them securely
and reliably to some form of cloud environment or computing entity for control, management and utilisation.
The Internet is a suitable, standardized, and proven means for the connection of IoT devices in various scenarios.
Connection over the Internet utilises existing protocols, standards, technologies and avoids investment
in new, specialised concepts. Thereby, this connection requires a transparent addressing schema which is
commonly TCP/IP, using domain names and IP addresses. However, in industrial, commercial and private
networks, the addressability and connectability/connectivity is often limited by firewalls, proxies and router
configurations utilising NAT. Thus, the present network configurations hinder the establishment of connections
between IoT devices across different locations. Therefore, the method for connecting IoT devices in a
client-server configu
ration proposed herein utilises the Tor (previously: The onion router/routing) network for
addressing of and secured communication to IoT and CPS devices. It is an overlay protocol that was designed
to allow for robust and anonymous communication. The benefit of this approach is to enable addressability
and connectivity of IoT devices in firewalled and potentially unknown and changing network environments,
thus allowing for IoT devices to be used reliably behind firewalls as long as outgoing communication is not
blocked.
(More)