July 29, 2010
Greetings from pleasant Maastricht, where the 78th IETF is being held this week. A lot of exciting things are happening on the wireless embedded Internet! Here is a crash course:
The 6LoWPAN WG is finishing its main objectives of finishing the new Header Compression [draft-ietf-6lowpan-hc] and Neighbor Discovery [draft-ietf-6lowpan-nd] optimizations. We expect both drafts to start the proposed standard process soon. Samita Chakrabarti and I will be releasing a short white paper on the updated 6LoWPAN ND for the IPSO Alliance soon.
The new CoRE WG held its second meeting with great progress. In just 4 months a stable version of the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) [draft-ietf-core-coap] was developed, along with 10+ interoperable implementations at Plugfest events held this week. Anyone can participate, see the CoRE Plugfest page.
The ROLL WG is currently in progress, with a major milestone being achieved with the completion of last call on the Ripple (RPL) routing protocol [draft-ietf-roll-rpl]. Work is ongoing to complete the security and route metric specifications.
Smart Grid is a hot topic in the energy and communication industries, and the IETF has been active in supporting the energy industry with information on the use of IP. The IETF has a Smart Power interest group for all interested.
See you in Beijing!
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Posted by zdshelby
June 17, 2010
Oulu hosted a great international Ubi Summer School the first week of June, organized by Prof. Timo Ojala. The school attracted 77 great students from 22 countries. It was a please to be teaching a workshop there, and hope to see everyone again next year.
It all started with the 2nd Ubiquitous City Seminar, which included talks from the cross-disiplinary teachers of the workshops ranging from Context-awareness to Ubiquitous art. My talk titled “IP-based Sensor Networks and the Embedded Web” is available here. The audience of the seminar was one of the most interesting I have ever seen, with everyone from sensor network researchs to architects and even anthropologists attending. Needless to say the panel was a blast!
My workshop had 17 really motivated students. Together we worked hard for three days on two projects:
1. Design of the 6LoWPAN network deployment for the Oulu SensorCity deployment of 20 public 6LoWPAN access points in downtown Oulu, Finland. See their final presentation.
2. Based on a group idea competition, the whole class implemented an entire Ubiquitous Security demonstration using the new IETF Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) in a mere 24 hours! The setup included QR Code based tag recognition, a RESTful access control design, a Web UI and custom implementations of a CoAP server and client. Best of all the students pulled off a live demonstration of the system in the workshop closing seminar. See their final presentation.
And see you there next summer!
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Posted by zdshelby
May 4, 2010
Late this summer the 5th SenZations Summer School on Applications of Smart and Connected devices will be held in Rijeka, Croatia. I will be giving a brand new seminar there on Embedded Web Services covering the exciting area of web services in sensor networks including the REST architecture, the Constrained Application Protocol and techniques for binary web service content. For the past two years (Slovenia and Macedonia) I have lectured at this workshop and can highly recommend it for graduate students in sensor and embedded networking!
For more information see http://www.senzations.net
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Posted by zdshelby
April 22, 2010
I will be teaching an IP-Based WSN workshop at the 1st International UBI Summer School held May 31st-June 4th in Oulu, Finland. The deadline has just been extended to April 30th – so still time to sign up! This summer school is highly recommended for those doing MSc or Phd work related to ubiquitous networks and computing, and consists of 6 top-notch workshops. There are still a few seats left in my workshop and three others.
http://www.ubioulu.fi/en/UBI-summer-school-2010
This summer school kicks off the UBI Challenge which encourages design, implementation and deployment of novel ubiquitous applications on the city of Oulu’s outstanding display and sensor network infrastructure. This will include a city wide deployment of 6LoWPAN 2.4 GHz and Sub-GHz access points!
http://www.ubioulu.fi/en/UBI-challenge
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Posted by zdshelby
March 4, 2010
The book exercises have (finally) been released at the 6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet website. This slide set includes an overview of embedded technology typically used in the Wireless Embedded Internet, an overview of embedded development and a short tutorial on Contiki. The slides currently include a small number of Contiki related exercises. Both the Contiki overview and exercises will be continuously updated, so check for updates!
Contiki programming exercises - Learn embedded development and 6LoWPAN programming with the open-source Contiki project
6LoWPAN Book Course Exercises (PPT) Updated 4.3.2010
6LoWPAN Book Course Exercises (PDF) Updated 4.3.2010
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Posted by zdshelby
February 17, 2010
I gave a book release seminar on Dec 6th at the Centre for Internet Excellence in Oulu, Finland. Thanks to the great hosts, we are now releasing the entire seminar in a really professional format on-line. The seminar gave a good overview of 6LoWPAN and the general contents of the book, covering about half of the course material slides and lasts for 80 minutes. Enjoy!
6LoWPAN Seminar Video (80 minutes, MP4) Recorded 6.12.2009
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Posted by zdshelby
August 3, 2009
I attended the 75th Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meeting in Stockholm last week. Here is some of the latest news from IETF activities related to the Internet of Things:
6LoWPAN - The 6lowpan working group is currently moving four Internet-Drafts towards last call in the standards track (Improved Header Compression, 6LoWPAN Neighbor Discovery) and informational track (Use Cases, Routing Requirements). I presented the latest ND draft, which has good consensus and will be going through a round of technical improvements within 2 weeks. Next the WG is looking to re-charter to continue on subjects such as security, MIBs etc.
ROLL – The roll working group presented the RPL (pronounced “ripple”) routing protocol draft, which has been accepted as an official working group document today. This will be the basis for routing over low-power and lossy networks including 6LoWPAN, which still needs lots of contribution to reach a full solution.
New 6lowapp effort - We held a very successful meeting about applications in resource-constrained networks. About 60-70 people attended presentations from Carsten Bormann, Don Sturek (from Pacific Gas & Electric and ZigBee/IP) along with a set of 2-minute stand-ups. The presentation is available here. The feedback from IETF Area Directors was that there is obvious support, motivation and requirements (and that we are in a hurry) – so start working! A 6lowapp mailing list and wiki page will be coming soon, keep tuned.
There was a great presence at the IETF from IPSO members, who held several meetings during the same week. Thanks to the move of ZigBee and the energy industry towards all-IP smart energy we say many new participants in Stockholm. It is really positive to see the collaboration between the IETF, IPSO, ZigBee and Utilities in this area.
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Posted by zdshelby
July 7, 2009
We have kicked off a new effort at the IETF called 6LowApp. The goal is to develop application protocols for resource-constrained embedded devices and networks. Now that 6LoWPAN and ROLL are providing a framework for wireless embedded IP networking, the next fronteir is suitable application protocols for discovery, management and data transfer.
IETF 75 (Stockholm) 6LowApp Wiki
Problem Statement Internet-Draft
Please show your support and contibute your ideas for 6LowApp. In Stockholm there will be an informal Bar BOF anyone can attend to show interest and discuss ideas, and you can always show your support on the mailing lists. Keep tuned here, as the process moves forward I’ll keep writing on our progress.
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Posted by zdshelby
February 18, 2009
Welcome to On the Internet of Things.
The purpose of this blog, is to keep people informed on what is happening in Internet of Things standardization, technology and business from an insider’s view. I have the pleasure of watching a technical and business revolution in the Internet happen from the inside, as a day job! As an early researcher in embedded IP, and later starting the world’s first 6LoWPAN networking company Sensinode, the last decade has been extremely interesting. The great part is that this was only the beginning. Activities in the IETF, the new IPSO Alliance, and a business awakening to embedded IP and WSN technology are starting to make the Internet of Things a reality.
Through this blog I will be sharing the inside story on Internet of Things developments through my activities at Sensinode, the IETF, the IPSO Alliance, the SENSEI project, open-source projects, and a touch of common sense opinion.
Enjoy!
Zach Shelby
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Posted by zdshelby
