There\u2019s a tremendous amount of buzz around the Internet of Things, or IoT:\u00a0 How it will revolutionise manufacturing, agriculture, medicine, and our daily lives; the novel capabilities it will support; the new era it will herald. But the Internet of Things relies on networks, and networking technologies are deployed and managed by people\u2014network administrators, in particular. Yet in recent years network administrators have been asked to \u201cdo more with less\u201d: less budget, a smaller staff, writes Cricket Liu, Chief DNS Architect, Infoblox.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve spent some time thinking about the effect the Internet of Things will have on networks and network administration and I\u2019ve developed some theories. Also, Infoblox recently commissioned a survey of networking professionals and hosted two panel discussions with customers on the Internet of Things to test some of those theories.<\/p>\n
For the most part, the survey and these panels confirmed my suspicions.\u00a0 For example, I had spoken with many customers who initially said they had no IoT devices whatsoever. When pressed, though, and given concrete examples (networked badge readers, surveillance systems, HVAC systems, cash registers, vending machines, and so on), most realized they already had at least a nascent IoT infrastructure. Accordingly, 75% of respondents to our survey reported that they already had office equipment \u201cThings\u201d on their network, and 70% reported security \u201cThings\u201d on their network.<\/p>\n
I had also encountered very few IT organisations that had deployed any infrastructure specifically for IoT, from dedicated networks to management systems. Again, our survey supported the anecdotal evidence \u2013 only 35% of respondents said they have deployed solutions specifically to support IoT.<\/p>\n
Since, in most cases, no dedicated network infrastructure exists for IoT devices, most IT organisations relegate IoT devices to existing networks. Only 30% of the organisations surveyed planned to create a separate logical or physical network for \u201cThings,\u201d while 46% will attach them to the corporate network.\u00a0 In our panel discussions, we found that most organisations simply dump IoT devices on existing guest wireless networks, which usually provide Internet access (which many \u201cThings\u201d require).<\/p>\n
However, guest wireless networks usually don\u2019t allow access to internal resources (e.g., Domain Controllers, database and file servers), which other IoT devices need, and they provide little or no authentication, unpredictable performance, and no prioritisation of traffic, all of which are required by some categories of these devices.<\/p>\n
Despite the varied requirements of these IoT devices, many IT organisations I\u2019ve met with described having \u201cThings\u201d that are \u201cthrown over the wall\u201d for deployment, well after another business unit had made the purchasing decision. Our survey bears this out:\u00a0 60% of the organisation surveyed reported being brought in to support IoT devices after another organisation acquired them, and 63% reported that the subsequent deployment was more challenging than the acquirer believed it would be.<\/p>\n
This difficulty in implementation isn\u2019t surprising.\u00a0 From our customers, we\u2019ve learned that IoT devices aren\u2019t that smart. Many lack a user interface, making configuration a challenge\u2014and often the responsibility of a network administrator, setting up DHCP options.\u00a0 Many are not easily upgradeable.\u00a0 Many are designed for consumer rather than enterprise deployment, and lack tools and features required for enterprise use.<\/p>\n
A university network administrator told me about dorm networks with hundreds of Apple TVs\u2014making Apple\u2019s Remote iOS app nearly useless, because it presents you with a list of those hundreds of Apple TVs to choose from.\u00a0 Some \u201cThings\u201d are just designed poorly. A network administrator for a hospital chain described an MRI system that used the same set of hardcoded IP addresses for every machine, meaning that the network administrator had to set up NAT for each MRI machine to ensure it was accessible across the network.<\/p>\n
This same lack of capability extends to security features.\u00a0 Most \u201cThings\u201d don\u2019t support strong authentication mechanisms such as 802.1X, leaving network administrators to use their MAC addresses\u2014or nothing\u2014as a weak form of authentication.\u00a0 Consequently, securing IoT devices\u2019 access to the network is difficult. Some organisations I spoke with used VLANs to isolate certain categories of \u201cThings,\u201d but dedicating one VLAN to each type of device certainly doesn\u2019t scale.<\/p>\n
Our survey reiterated the concerns of our panel participants:\u00a0 63% of those surveyed are concerned about the security challenges posed by the Internet of Things.<\/p>\n
Based on our discussions and the survey results, I\u2019ve come up with a short list of recommendations for network administrators facing an Internet of Things deployment:<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Work to get yourself a seat at the table early in IoT deployment planning.\u00a0 You should have input into the minimum network requirements of devices that you\u2019ll have to deploy and support.<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Those requirements should include support for 802.1X, DHCP, SNMP management, remote upgradeability, and IPv6.<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Consider deployment of IPv6.\u00a0 As you probably know, IPv4 addresses have become much more difficult to get.\u00a0 Some of your \u201cThings\u201d may require access from the Internet or from third parties\u2019 networks.\u00a0 Don\u2019t let your lack of routable IP address space hamper your IoT implementation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There\u2019s a tremendous amount of buzz around the Internet of Things, or IoT:\u00a0 How it will revolutionise manufacturing, agriculture, medicine, and our daily lives; the novel capabilities it will support; the new era it will herald. But the Internet of Things relies on networks, and networking technologies are deployed and managed by people\u2014network administrators, in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":2241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,38],"tags":[177,315,284,113],"class_list":["post-2240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-insights","category-networking","tag-infoblox","tag-internet-of-things","tag-iot","tag-networking-2"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intelligentcio.com\/me\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}