Rethinking the Internet - Self-Classification With "Chirps"

Being Controversial - Again.

When I wrote Rethinking IOT, I expected one proposal to be controversial. And it was.

I had stated that the myriad devices making up the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) will be too dumb, cheap, and uncritical to justify the power to equip them all with IPv6. Howls of derision resulted.

But I have been through this before. Back In 2004, I wrote another controversial piece about the ugly truths of (single radio) mesh. Today, almost all mesh network products use dual radio,  wireless switch stacks - even in home Wi-Fi networks

At the edge of Industrial networks, the vast majority of devices will speak and listen in tiny bits of data- like ants. I developed the concept of “Chirp" Networks: with tiny bits of data with minimal framing.

And like lightweight pollen in spring time, no guaranteed delivery either. (Orchestrating "Wind" directions for these digital pollen will be addressed in a upcoming  post).

Digital Pollen can be non-unique also

These chirps are self classified. Chirps identify themselves in both public and private ways, to allow integration of data from a wide variety of sources. This identification might be type (moisture sensor, door lock, etc.), location, etc.

Because the size of the future IoT is well beyond our current comprehension, it won’t be possible for humans (or even machines!) to catalog every device or pre-configure preferred data sources. Instead, Publish/Discover/Subscribe will reveal useful data that no one could have known of or predicted.

At the edges of the network, the vast numerical majority of devices will simply speak and listen in tiny bits of data. And they will be designed with a basic trust in an IoT universe that propagates these messages to some sort of integration point where the IoT may be interpreted for human consumption.

Also controversial - Chirps do not need to be unique or need IPV6. Nobody confuses my grandfather Francis daCosta with me. Our lineage path differ in our family's network tree.

Routing -- Back to Trees.

So. If the Chirps are so simple and non-uniquely addressed, how will big data integrators ever make sense of the cacophony?

The routing and other network intelligence come from a device I’ve called a Propagator in the Chirp related patents and the book. Its a  straightforward derivative of  our mesh node.  The Propagators add the context of the data (location, lineage, et al) and the intelligence to the transmission (multicast bundling, pruning, and routing; addressing and IPv6 packetization; management; control loops; the list goes on..). Economies of scale stem from putting CPU cycles on mesh nodes, thus simplifying end devices.

In this three tiered architecture (Integrator, Propagators, Devices) it is critical that deterministic paths join them. Happily, the overlying structured tree topology I discussed earlier (and developed in 2002 for Meshdynamics  mesh nodes) works perfectly well for Propagators. Nature tells us that trees scale, connecting trillions and trillions of cells in a networked path (leaves-to-roots and vice-versa) that doesn’t burden any cell with management of the whole.

I am interested in developing collaboration with the larger and sophisticated OEMs and System Developers who might share this vision of the full potential of a massively-scaled public/private Internet of Things. If these ideas intrigue you, let’s talk.

About the Software

"Meshdynamics Scalable and Open Pub Sub enables us to rapidly integrate with Enterprise Class, OMG (Object Management Group)-approved, industry- standard messaging systems from RTI (Real-Time Innovations), PRISMTECH, OpenDDS, and others to provide assured real time end to end performance, even if we scale to millions of devices at the edge.” Curtis Wright, Space and Navy Warfare Center, US Navy.  More

“Meshdynamics’ propagator node software allows us to deploy WiFi networks today with minimal additional wiring and also incorporate emerging Internet of Things devices on the same infrastructure today and in the future.” Mr. Arai Yuji, GM, Communication Division, Sharp Electronics, Japan. More

About Francis daCosta

The emerging Internet of Things architectural concepts and Meshdynamics wireless mesh networking propagator technology has been influenced by the Robotics and Machine Control background of founder Francis daCosta - early mesh nodes were installed on robots. Francis previously founded Advanced Cybernetics Group, providing robot control system software for mission critical applications, mandating real time sensor guided control and both local and supervisory control loops.

At MITRE, he served as an advisor to the United States Air Force Robotics and Automation Center of Excellence (RACE). In 2012, Intel sponsored Francis’ book Rethinking the Internet Of Things  It was a  finalist for the 2014 Dr. Dobbs Jolt Award.

Blog Links  Rethinking Tree Topologies  Self Classification With Chirps  Smarter Simulations