"A programmable, flexible and scalable network architecture will be required to support efficiently any Industrial-IoT solution. Vendor-Independent Software Defined Network will play a key role to address low latency, secure and real-time solutions. "

1. Juniper Business Use Only
"A programmable,
flexible and scalable
network architecture
will be required to
support efficiently any
Industrial-IoT
solution. Vendor-
Independent Software
Defined Network will
play a key role to
address low latency,
secure and real-time
solutions. "
The evolution and transformation of wireless communication technologies, including
advancement in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), is expanding potential application
domains of traditional IoT solutions. According to Cisco IBSG, more than 50 billion
devices are expected to be connected to internet by 2020, with a growing percentage
(+20%) being from industrial sectors. Demands for automation, security, operational
efficiency and scalability, via increasingly predominance of M2M connections and AI
applications, are driving efforts towards a converged architecture for Industrial
Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) and traditional IoT ecosystems. This creates new
paradigm/needs for an Industrial IoT (IIoT).
The emergence of new IIoT requirements, still in their infancy, call for novel
integrated solution approaches from different industry actors. The networking
industry, which provides the foundation of modern Internet infrastructures,
represents a solid baseline to evolve from, creating great new business opportunities
for Networking organizations.
The Industrial IoT (IIoT) will introduce new depth to M2M communication & control
and extend the impact of Man-Machine interaction. Thus, Health and Safety concerns
will make data and application security one of the most important aspects for IIoT
success. IIoT solutions will be used in critical tasks that can impact on human lives and
potentially damage multibillion-dollar operations.
These applications will depend on reliable data communication links with stable
Quality of Service (QoS) yet can adapt to environmental change and react to multiple
sensor technologies over a range of heterogenous networks.
Such solutions must collect and process an enormous amount of heterogenous data,
and analytics in order that they can control applications and processes to create
stable quality of outcomes (final actions/products) in IIoT environment.

2. Juniper Business Use Only
"A programmable,
flexible and scalable
network architecture
will be required to
support efficiently any
Industrial-IoT
solution. Vendor-
Independent Software
Defined Network will
play a key role to
address low latency,
secure and real-time
solutions. "
Today, cloud computing infrastructures are providing flexible on-demand capabilities
for storage, computation and networking. This in turn drives simplification, cost
efficiency and scalability for the IoT providers, thus becoming a widespread
deployment option for all IT solutions.
The emergence of IIoT (and IoT) applications - with ever more stringent requirements
in term of bandwidth provisioning, latency and real time data access and telemetry
(processing, storage and networking) are driving cloud architecture transformations.
This requires networks to circumvent the infrastructure bottlenecks and critical
latency fluctuations that would negatively impact the overall application quality
experiences.
The shift in network design is happening with advancement in proposals of “edge”
and “fog” computing architectures. This entails the introduction of new solutions to
orchestrate edge and cloud resources across a range of access technologies and allow
IIoT actors to participate in intelligent, coordinated actions and delivering the desired
outcome.
The core requirements for flexible, on-demand, real-time access to data storage,
processing and networking are similar to more traditional Telco-cloud solutions.
However, resources (sensors, devices, routers and switches) are now distributed
between cloud and edge locations (micro/nano DCs). Thus, responsibilities could be
segmented by ‘classification’ with edge computing providing capabilities to meet SLA
and QoS sensitive for IIoT actors whilst intensive processing/storage could be
forwarded to the cloud computing layer for scale out and pay as you use enablement.
In this scenario, the networking functionality will play a strategic role in enabling
inter-layer communication and orchestration, as such among edge-fog
devices/switches and cloud servers. The latency/availability demands of such data
streams – and the requirement to monitor KPIs and enforce SLAs in dynamic
conditions – can be delivered through an SDN-NFV architecture. A software driven
middle networking layer will also allow distributed (edge) control of the network so
IIoT Users and Sensors can adjust resources to reflect local demand/trends in real
time rather than have individual zone needs subjugated to a centralized-cloud
computing demand model.

3. Juniper Business Use Only
"A programmable,
flexible and scalable
network architecture
will be required to
support efficiently any
Industrial-IoT
solution. Vendor-
Independent Software
Defined Network will
play a key role to
address low latency,
secure and real-time
solutions. "
In an IIoT architecture, the interplay between different cloud and edge computing
layers will have a key role. As stated, a layered approach is envisioned to harmonize
different requirements while providing scalability, flexibility and programmability in
a vendor independent environment. At high level, we can identify following layers of
interest:
1) Individual actors (Users/Machines)
2) Applications (e.g. smart sensing, transportation, analytical trends, etc.)
3) Network Types - Personal (Bluetooth); Home (WiFi, Z-Wave, ZegBee);
Industrial (WirelessHART); Public (4G/5G Mobile; WiMAX)
4) Edge Computing devices (switches, server, etc.)
5) Networking devices (router, switches, NFV, etc.)
6) Core computing (cloud) devices (storage, processing, AI, etc.)
A programmatically controlled networking layer, such as that defined by SDN
concepts, will enable the interplay of different domains and the network and it can
orchestrate fulfillment of different inter-networking requirements, driven by
Cloud/Edge needs, as summarized in the table below:
With SDN models enabling the decoupling of data plane from both control and
management planes, they can be centralized or distributed according to application
requirements.
In typical Telco-cloud use cases, application/control are realized on common and
standardized HW solutions running open source SW solutions, exposed through a
set of standardized APIs. These architectures has allowed the creation of an
ecosystem of containerized microservice solutions/applications to be orchestrated
in specific end-use solutions. The mirroring of this architecture and technology in
IIoT domains will help to address challenges of interplay between integrated cloud
and edge solutions:
In summary, incorporating SDN control services within IIoT gateways would allow
IIoT technology domains to extend the management of Edge-Fog interfaces into
Cloud computing infrastructures, providing enhanced end-end services that
transcend multiple domains.
Edge-Computing Cloud-Computing
Security Local Global
Latency Low High
Bandwidth Low High
Server-Nodes Large Few
Mobility Lage Few
Delay-Jitter Low High
Geo-Distribution Distributed Centralized
....... ....... .......

4. Juniper Business Use Only
"A programmable,
flexible and scalable
network architecture
will be required to
support efficiently any
Industrial-IoT
solution. Vendor-
Independent Software
Defined Network will
play a key role to
address low latency,
secure and real-time
solutions. "
A simplistic I-IoT architecture is often represented as 3 logical layers - a perception
layer (devices/actuators), a networking layer and an application layer. However, the
functional separation of this model quickly blurs with the ‘network’ and ‘application’
layers becoming collaborative. This is particularly the case where the application
logic is delivered through a combination of edge, fog and cloud-based intelligence
acting in concert. It also requires a network controller model that can orchestrated
by actors across all these domains to allow the networks to flex to meet the needs
on the application for scale; latency and availability.
In comparison to a logical layer model, a physical model would have significant
overlap between function and location. An access location would contain
devices/actuators but also access-specific controllers to support multi-protocol
connectivity for all types of devices within a domain (e.g. ZigBee, Z-wave, IETF, NFC,
WiFi, Ethernet). In addition, access controllers could provide basic
management/configuration of IIoT devices, including device detection; node
authentication; access control and software upgrades.
Time/Latency sensitive applications logic could be applied at edge/aggregation sites
(fog computing model), whilst applications leveraging analytics and external data
sources could be delivered in centralized site (cloud computing). Thus, network and
application layers would coordinate in routing decisions for different flows of data
based on properties such as data type; volume; age; persistence etc.
Domenico Di Mola