[From the last episode: ProtocolsAn agreed way of doing something. Like a convention, except that protocols tend to be related to processes. can be turned into standardsA way of doing something specific that has been agreed by multiple parties in an official manner. Some "standards" aren't official standards; the best ones have been established in an open fashion, where anyone with an interest can contribute and where large companies can't push little companies around. if blessed by an authorized standards body]

Let’s say you’ve got some spiffy new IoTThe Internet of Things. A broad term covering many different applications where "things"  are interconnected through the internet. communications protocol. If you don’t standardize, then you need to make sure that there are enough people making equipment – stereos and kitchen and laundry and heating/air conditioning and everything else – will use that protocol so that you and I can go out and get anything we want and have it work with the other stuff.

In the industry, this broadly referred to as building an ecosystemA group of related businesses that agree to work together, typically through a somewhat formal organization that may have a brand name. If something like that existed, for, say, produce sold in a grocery store, then the ecosystem might include select farmers, distributors, transportation companies, and grocery stores., and it’s closely related to the notion of interop that we discussed previously. You want as many companies to support your way of doing things as possible so that your customers have options.

But if you’re making dishwashers and you have to sell models with different protocols – say, one from Apple, one from Google, and one from Amazon – you could have a heck of a time managing inventory for all the combinations. So you may end up limiting options for each protocol. Instead of providing 10 models that everyone can use, you might have two models that work with Apple and a couple more that work with Google and others that work with Amazon or other folks. This can mean less choice for consumers.

The good news, if you own the protocol (like Apple or Google), is that you get control. That fact of less consumer choice becomes a benefit to you, in so many words, because you, as the supplier, get to decide what options your customers will have by influencing the ecosystem – by deciding which equipment will be approved.

Walled Gardens and Interop

Which brings us back to the world of walled gardens. As we’ve discussed, there are many companies now trying to provide walled-gardenAn approach to the IoT that restricts which devices and brands you can have work together. It could protect you, help assure interoperability, keep out certain competitors, or any and all of the above. IoT experiences. You buy all of your home equipment from a specific list of providers and it all works together. (Hopefully.)

While some might call the private protocols used in such a setup “standards” in the sense that they’ve been agreed to, they don’t qualify as true standards because they’re not open (there’s probably much of the technology that is kept secret) and not everybody gets to play.

By making something a true standard, you remove the walls from the garden. If you’re lucky enough to end up with only one standard, then everyone can use that standard and you can mix and match equipment much more readily.

Multiple Standards: Complementary and Competing

More typically, however, you end up with a few standards. In some cases, it’s because they do different things: WiFiA common type of wireless network used to connect computers and phones to each other and the internet. wasn’t designed to do what Bluetooth does, for example. Or because of some other natural barrier: it mostly doesn’t matter that North America and Europe use different voltagesVoltage is what gets electrons to flow. It's analogous to water pressure, which gets water to flow. Voltage is measured in units of "volts.".

But in other cases, you end up with two (or more) standards, either of which can work, approved by different bodies, so they’re simply competing with each other (and probably won’t interoperateThis 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. unless consumers demand it).

The many, many protocols being developed to make the IoT work are in various stages of standardization. Some will never be standardized; some are private for now, but they’ve been submitted to a body for ratification; some, like WiFi and IPThis can mean two things (at least):
• The Internet Protocol. Governs the addresses of sources and destinations on a network (without worrying about what’s in between). Used on Layer 3 of the stack.
• "Intellectual property." This can have lots of meanings, but, in the computer-chip world, it refers to parts of a chip design that have been built and optimized by one company, which then sells them to other companies that don’t want to design those blocks themselves. They’re not selling actual chips; they’re selling the design of a block that will be used within a chip.
, are already well known. And some occupy a murky world of alliancesA group of companies working together (in an anti-trust fashion) to promote a particular protocol or set of protocols. They’re like a standards body, but they don’t have the official imprimatur of a standards body.: a bunch of companies that get together to agree on some technology. Sounds like a standards body, doesn’t it?

Standards and Not-Quite Standards

But not all standards bodiesA group of companies getting together in a manner consistent with anti-trust laws to agree on how to do things. Rather than limiting competition, this is intended to foster competition by getting agreement on some basic thing (like wall sockets having 110 V) and then letting companies compete on that basis. are equal. A few have been designated as formal bodies, and these tend to be authorized (or at least recognized) by governments. ISO is one of those. Others are government-independent, but receive a blessing from an organization like ISO.

A good example of this for the IoT is the IEEE-SA group (IEEE stands for the “Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,” and is typically pronounced “eye-triple-ee”), made up of electrical engineers worldwide. ISO tends to recognize IEEE standards, which gives such standards a higher degree of “officialness.”

Other groups have no such special designation; they simply form (with carefully-crafted bylaws to avoid anti-trustRefers to laws preventing competing companies from anti-competitive behavior. issues) and do their work. Many times, after they’re done, they’ll send the results to a group like IEEE-SA to get more credibility. Or maybe not.

All of this is simply to say that, in the rapidly evolving IoT, there are protocols, there are alliances that support and promote some of those protocols, and there are standards. That middle group is where it gets dicey, since the folks developing equipment will likely have competing protocols from competing alliances to deal with. Either they have to make the equipment more complicated by letting it hook up to a bunch of different protocols, or they have to pick and choose.

While there are standards for every possible thing you can imagine – the dimensions on integrated circuitAn 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. packages, the thickness of insulation on wiring, how different connectors are shaped – standards are of particular importance to communication. You’ll see many protocol acronyms (like IP), but only some of them will be out-and-out standards.

Next we’ll put all of these notions of protocols and standards into a more practical context for you when evaluating your IoT options.