Interop: Getting Things to Work Together

[From the last episode: ServicesWe are used to purchasing products outright. "Services" is a new concept where you may or may not buy the product, but optional or mandatory services come with the product. Those services may have an ongoing cost separate from the purchase price. are increasingly a part of the equation both for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoTIndustrial Internet of Things. A broad collection of factory, automotive, agricultural, medical, and other areas where IoT technology is used.) and the Consumer IoTThe Internet of Things. A broad term covering many different applications where "things"  are interconnected through the internet. (CIoTConsumer Internet of Things. IoT gadgetry designed for home and personal use.)]

One enormous consideration when assembling a group of Things into an IoT configuration is how well the devices – and all the things between the devices – work together to create a seamless interconnected systemThis is a very generic term for any collection of components that, all together, can do something. Systems can be built from subsystems. Examples are your cell phone; your computer; the radio in your car; anything that seems like a "whole.". There’s a word for this concept: interoperabilityThis refers to how well different pieces of equipment can work together. Macs and PCs, for instance have some limited interop, but there are many Mac devices that can't work on a PC, and vice versa. This is an important notion for systems, like the IoT, that involve many different pieces of equipment working together., or interop for short.

There’s nothing new about this concept. Let’s take networking as an example. Networking generically refers to how things get interconnected on a networkA collection of items like computers, printers, phones, and other electronic items that are connected together by switches and routers. A network allows the connected devices to talk to each other electronically. The internet is an example of an extremely large network. Your home network, if you have one, is an example of a small local network.. This would certainly apply to upcoming IoT devices, but it’s been around for a long time. It’s how your computers and phones get connected.

Let’s say you want to send an email to a friend. You’ll create the email on your computer or phone and then hit “send” and that’s it. But for that to work, your friend’s computer has to understand the email. And before it gets to your friend, it has to leave your computer, go through a router (most likely), then go through your modemA piece of network equipment that converts data into a format that can be transmitted. Old modems sent the data on a phone line; modern cable modems send the data across a cable connection. It stands for "modulator/demodulator." to the outside world (cable or phone line or whatever), then go through all kinds of switchesA switch helps direct network traffic to the right destination. At a high level, it's very similar to a router. Technically, switches are used to create local subnetworks; routers connect subnetworks together. and routersAn electronic box that helps steer data on a network. For instance, you may have one in your home connecting your phone and computer and other devices to each other and to the internet. The data itself has information about where it's being sent; the router uses that information to send it in the right direction. At a really basic level, you can think of a router and a switch as being the same thing. If you want to get more technical, a switch creates a local subnetwork, and the router connects multiple subnetworks (or multiple networks). that make up the internet and that steer the email to your friend.

All those pieces – the ends as well as everything in the middle – have to know what to do with the email. If even one device in the middle gets confused, then the email will not arrive where you wanted it to. In fact, it might “bounce” back to you with a message saying that something was wrong somewhere along the way.

Interop is so important for this kind of equipment that the industry has interop conventions or “plug-fests.” These are events where companies plug their devices into a wide range of configurations to prove that they work reliably. Again, this isn’t new – it’s been around for a long time.

Interop and the IoT

The very same considerations that must be in play to allow your email to arrive are also important in order for the IoT to work. If you have a smart thermostat but it doesn’t work well with your furnace or air conditioner, then you’ve got a problem. If your soil moisture sensorA device that can measure something about its environment. Examples are movement, light, color, moisture, pressure, and many more. sends an alert saying that you need water, but the system receiving the alert can’t understand the alert, then you’ve got a problem.

This may sound obvious, but it’s a nettlesome problem for the industry – and always has been. We’ll talk about some of the things that make this work in future posts. But the things that make them not work can be diverse, even for things that were designed to work together.

• A device might work well with others – until the temperature gets too high (or low).
• “Working together” tends to involve machinesIn our context, a machine is anything that isn't human (or living). That includes electronic equipment like computers and phones. sending messages to each other (which we’ll look at in the future). But if the messages are fine but the timing in how they’re sent is sketchy, then it might break.
• These machines include lots of siliconAn element (number 14 in the periodic table) that can be a semiconductor, making it the material of preference for circuits and micro-mechanical devices. chipsAn electronic device made on a piece of silicon. These days, it could also involve a mechanical chip, but, to the outside world, everything looks electronic. The chip is usually in some kind of package; that package might contain multiple chips. "Integrated circuit," and "IC" mean the same thing, but refer only to electronic chips, not mechanical chips. to make them work. You can design a silicon chip to do what you want, but, just like with a recipe for making bread, on any given day you might have variations in how the recipe works. That’s certainly the case for chips. If a designer didn’t do the chip design in a way that accommodates these variations, then one chip might work under all conditions, while another chip of exactly the same design might fail in some conditions.

Future posts will dig into this in more detail. But the big message for now is that, without interop, the IoT fails. The big question is, should we expect everything to work with everything?