2 Billion Devices Just Became Interoperable

Anyone who has followed my blog, attended one of my speaking engagements or participated in a meeting with me is aware of my philosophy on IoT and its requirement to design from a function as opposed to a technology which will only restrict IoTs capabilities to the limitations of that technology.  I believe there are needs for many different protocols, I believe XMPP is the only protocol for gateway to cloud but not necessarily for the LAN.  I also believe that creating silos, which is what every current platform accomplishes, will ultimately stop the projected market from ever being realized.  I speak of ubiquity for devices, applications, systems and suppliers (service companies, manufacturers etc.) and the need for a dynamic fabric allowing realtime action on events.  Having awareness of all instances, understanding availability (not just online offline but rather busy or available) of delivering the event directly to end points (human, system, application) that have specific expertise and can act ultimately eliminating queuing (latency) waiting for other processes to complete.  This realization is very close to complete with the announcement of the new UPnP framework using XMPP for the cloud.

I have been involved with UPnP Forum as a member of both Cloud and IoT task forces for just over a year along with an incredibly respected group of dedicated individuals from industry leaders such as Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, CableLabs, Comcast, LGE, GoPro, etc.  The ultimate goal of the efforts by UPnP was to create a framework that allows (either by client update or soon to be released proxy) the currently deployed 2 Billion UPnP devices to be interoperable with each other and all new devices.

The UPnP Certification Test Tool 2.0 (that adds certification at the UPnP+ level) was released last November. With that, we have achieved the goal that will allow the interoperability of Billions of Things. It was announced yesterday that several new documents have been released that explain how UPnP+ and UPnP Internet of Things can be used for a complete IoT solution.

The framework includes:

• Bridging & Sensor Management – Low power bridging of IP & non‐IP technologies
• Cloud & Anywhere Access – UPnP+ uses well‐recognized XMPP framework for cloud connectivity
• Established Data Model Scalable at Speed of Internet – UPnP+ enables defining new IoT devices in minutes while using certifiable ISO specification http://upnp.org/specs/smgt/UPnP-smgt-SensorDataModel-v1-Service.pdf
• Robust Security Required For Certification – UPnP+ certification requires implementation of role‐ based security service
• Allows different local communication and protocol networks to interact as one, even if they do not use IP‐based networking
• Includes seamless bridging to existing device network protocols such as Bluetooth, Z‐Wave, or ZigBee
• Provides a development platform for “home automation hub” manufacturers to integrate with the billions of UPnP devices already in the home
• Aggregates the control point and management interfaces to include disparate technologies and connectivity implementations UPnP’s wide adoption in over 2 billion devices is due in large part to UPnP Forum’s embrace of both commercial and open source environments. Today UPnP development tools and code bases are available across every major operating system including Windows, iOS, MacOS, Linux, and Android, is available in a variety of open source projects, and runs in a variety of programming languages such as C, C++, Java, Javascript and Python.

With UPnP and UPnP+, the industry has a proven, established discovery and control framework built for the Internet of Things. By building upon the foundation laid through the adoption of UPnP technology by over one thousand companies, 2 billion products and nearly fifteen years of experience, UPnP+ has incorporated modern capabilities such as access to cloud and web services, sensor bridging for any device regardless or power profile or network, a flexible and easily expandable data model and a robust security layer to create a future-proofed standard built to enable the Internet of Things to reach its full potential.

To put this into perspective, the following chart provides a comparison market size of the UPnP Forum and the “NEW” alliances created for standardizing the IoT.

IoT Software Framework Comparison Matrix (Source: UPnP Forum)

Documentation is available at

• UPnP: The Discovery & Service Layer For The Internet of Things(April 2015)  
  Full Whitepaper |  Short Marketing Brief  |  Presentation
• Leveraging UPnP+: The Next Generation of Universal Interoperability(April 2015)  
  Full Whitepaper |  Short Marketing Brief  |  Presentation
• Making The Smart Home Smarter With UPnP Technologies(April 2015)  
  Full Whitepaper |  Short Marketing Brief  |  Presentation

For information on cloud based UPnP server for testing and certification please contact me at michael@cytiot.com or 775-830-9755