Abstract
The Internet has revolutionised the way we access and disseminate information and changed the way we communicate with each other. More and more homes are Internet-enabled as people from all walks of life embrace this technology because of the benefits it brings. However, to date Internet usage has predominately focused on personal computing. This said, an interesting technological shift is taking place, whereby any device, irrespective of its capabilities or conventional usage, will form part of the Internet. These devices will reside at the edge of the Internet, thus enabling devices to exploit the power of Internet communications to interoperate devices and utilise the functions they provide.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ubiquitous Computing: A vision that computers will exist everywhere. Devices with networking and processing capabilities will embed themselves within the fabric of our physical environments, effectively making them invisible to the end user.
Autonomic Computing: An approach, initially defined by IBM, for designing computer systems that have self-management capabilities. Adopting these principles allows devices to self-configure, self-heal, self-optimise, and self-protect.
Home Networking: Residential networks designed to interconnect networked-enabled devices. These networks are typically used in conjunction with Broadband Internet services.
Networked Appliances: Devices that publish the functions they provide as independent services that can be discovered by other devices in the network to control, monitor, manage, and extend the functionality they support beyond what they where initially designed to do.
Heterogeneity: Devices built by different manufacturers using parts or elements that conform to different standards. This makes inter-device communications difficult.
Interoperability: Mechanisms used to overcome heterogeneity. Devices can be made to interoperate and internetwork using agreed upon standards that govern how elements or parts contained within the device are used. This ensures that devices can connect to each other and interoperate in a standardised way.
Service discovery: Network protocols used to automatically discover services provided by devices within the network. Standards are used to define how services are described and how queries are formulated in order to find those services.