Supporting Efficient Machine-to-Machine Communications in the Future Mobile Internet

Abstract — Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication represents an important new class of applications for the future “Internet of Things (IoT)”. The IoT scenario requires scalable connectivity to billions of embedded devices such as sensors, RFID’s and machines. Current sensor networking solutions involve the use of gateways for hierarchical access to sensor devices, but this approach leads to specialized M2M systems which are not visible to the vast majority of Internet devices and applications. The MobilityFirst future Internet architecture provides a new framework for efficiently supporting sensor net and M2M scenarios through the use of an identity naming system for all network attached objects using the concept of a “globally unique identifier (GUID)”. The use of GUID results in a “flat” network where sensors and other embedded devices are visible to all applications and devices on the Internet. In addition, GUID names make it possible to introduce context and content-aware services which are well suited for M2M scenarios where attributes such as location or type of content are more important than physical address for establishing network connectivity. This paper presents a discussion of how M2M service scenarios are supported in the MobilityFirst architecture, introducing the protocol layers and API’s as they apply to sensors and embedded devices. A proof-of-concept prototype implementation is discussed and an application to a sensor scenario is described. Keywords- M2M communications, sensor networks, Internet of things, future Internet architectur