RE-NetBoot: Resource-Efficient Network Boot for IoT Platform

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) platform consists of numerous IoT devices and a small number ofservers. In order for the platform to operate efficiently and reliably, servers need to have completecontrol over many IoT devices. The advantage of using network boot in this environment is thatthe server has control over the device’s boot process. When applying network boot on an IoT platform,the server needs to be able to handle the network boot that many IoT devices request. If theserver does not have enough processing power for the network boot request, IoT device boot wouldbe delayed. In this paper, we propose a resource-efficient network boot to solve this problem. Theproposed framework has three mechanism. First, the server reserves the right to control which systemimage to transfer during the network boot process on the platform. Second, the server appliesdeduplication to the system image to minimize the amount of data required for transmission. Third,the server monitors network boot requests and performs file transfers appropriate to the situation,minimizing time spent on transfers. The proposed system allows the server to efficiently control numerousIoT devices when using network boot on the IoT platform.