I didn’t set out to develop a new architecture for the Internet of Things (IoT). Rather, I was thinking about the implications of control and scheduling within machine social networks in the context of Metcalfe’s Law. The coming tsunami of machine-to-machine interconnections could yield tremendous flows of information – and knowledge.

Once we free the machine social network (comprised of sensors and an unimaginable number of other devices) from the drag of human interaction, there is tremendous potential for creating autonomous communities of machines that require only occasional interaction with, or reporting to, humans.

The conventional wisdom is that the expansive address space of IPv6 solves the IoT problem of myriad end devices. But the host-to-host assumptions fossilized into the IP protocol in the 1970s fundamentally limited its utility for the very edge of the IoT network. As the Internet of Things expands exponentially over the coming years, it will be expected to connect to devices that are cheaper, dumber, and more diverse. Traditional networking thinking will fail for multiple reasons.

First, although IPv6 provides an address for these devices, the largest population of these appliances, sensors, and actuators will lack the horsepower in terms of processors, memory, and bandwidth to run the bloated IP protocol stack. It simply does not make financial sense to burden a simple sensor with all of the protocol overhead needed for host-to-host communications.