Design of End-to-End Connection Technology of Microcomputer Equipment Using Overlay Network

Abstract

In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted attention according to the development of sensing technology and wireless communication technology. IoT devices are interconnected to realize a specific service with sensors and actuation functions over several communication methods. Internet Protocol (IP) exists as a basic communication technology for realizing an IoT system. Since IPv4 is a mainstream protocol on the Internet, the lack of compatibility between IPv4 and IPv6 should be great issues to realize IoT services. Additionally, recent networks employ the Network Address Port Translation (NAPT) technology to protect a network and to reduce the number of required IPv4 global addresses. The introduction of NAPT causes an accessibility issue due to the blocking of incoming packets. As a new issue, the mobility of IoT devices also becomes a concern about seamless communication because a change of IP address causes a disconnection of transport layer sessions. As a technique for solving these problems, the authors have developed CYber PHysical Overlay Network over Internet Communication (CYPHONIC) that supports accessibility and seamless mobility over the Internet. Since high-performance IoT devices typically implement the full IP stack, both IPv4 and IPv6 can be supported. Therefore, CYPHONIC can provide inter-connectivity among IoT devices. On the contrary, resource-constrained IoT devices with a low power operation support only the limited IP stack such as IPv6 over Low power Wireless Personal Area (6LowPAN). This paper proposes a new interconnectivity mechanism between IP networks and 6LowPAN by extending CYPHONIC. Therefore, the proposed mechanism can provide interconnectivity among 6LowPAN devices and IP devices to collaborate on a service. The proposed system introduces a gateway device for connecting between IP networks and 6LowPAN. Additionally, it also extends the signaling process of CYPHONIC to support 6LowPAN based IoT devices. Since the object of this paper is confirming the feasibility of the proposed mechanism, we have designed the implementation with Thread protocol that support 6LowPAN.