The Internet of Things (IoT) has been called the most important tech trend of this decade.

The
numbers associated with IoT are always in the billions and even in the trillions! But there are
also a lot of myths surrounding the technology.
The confusion starts right from what should be considered as constituting an IoT system to even
the definition of IoT itself! There are companies that refer to IoT as Internet of Everything, some
call it the Industrial Internet and some prefer to stick to the old term M2M (Machine to
Machine).
At Softweb Solutions, we believe that the Internet of Things has the potential to connect all our
devices and create one integrated smart system. In this blog post, we will dispel the top 5 myths
and misconceptions people have about IoT.

Myth 1 - The Internet of Things is a futuristic technology

which might be useful in the future.
The figures being talked about when it comes to IoT often involve projections for the next few
years so it can be tempting to think of this as something whose time has not yet come.
But the IoT devices and systems have already achieved sales worth $180 billion in 2014 and 2
billion units have been shipped. By 2020, the industry will cross the $1 trillion mark with over 8
billion units being sold annually with a total installation base of around 30 billion devices. What
this means is that IoT is not as futuristic as some might think.

Its already here and has probably been adopted by your rivals. This is because the building
blocks of IoT microcontrollers, sensors of all kinds, microprocessors coupled with networking
solutions are already being used in several industries today. In fact, some of your processes could
already be classified as being IoTized. In the next few years, these devices will get smaller, faster
and be able to send more data while becoming cheaper.
A key part of the IoT system is having embedded and programmable electronics in the right
place. This field has made a lot of progress in the last 10 years. The next step is giving them the
ability to talk to other devices or to you no matter where you are located. For example, you can
program your microwave to heat up or cook your food in a certain manner. By making your
microwave capable of receiving instructions over the internet, you can order it to heat up your
food when you leave the office and come home to a ready to eat dinner.
Home automation is one of the areas where a lot of companies are coming up with innovative
ways to remotely control the lighting and HVAC systems in your home, security systems and
other applications. These are just the basic applications. More advanced IoT systems will detect
if a room is unoccupied and switch off the lights and heating, monitor for carbon monoxide
poisoning and call 911 on its own and even help older people live on their own.

You may not implement IoT, but your competitor will and could put you out of business.

Myth 2 There are no set standards for the Internet of

Things and the whole things Betamax vs. VHS redux.
Another fear that companies have is that there are no set and universally accepted standards for
the Internet of Things. This is making some organizations skeptical about investing in IoT at
this stage since they are waiting for a clear winner to emerge in the standards wars.
Nobody wants to be the one held responsible for implementing an IoT system based on the
losers standard. IoT means that different hardware devices will talk to each other. So having a
common language makes sense. Their fears about interoperability are not entirely unfounded
since as of now there are five major standards groups being led by tech giants.

Source: http://mroche.umwblogs.org/vhs-vs-betamax/
AllSeen Alliance: This group is led by Qualcomm and the other main members include Cisco,
Panasonic, LG, Sony and Microsoft. It has over 100 other industry leaders and at the moment is
the main alliance based on numbers alone. AllJoyn is the open source framework that the
AllSeen Alliance is promoting. It was developed and contributed to the group by Qualcomm.
Open Interconnect Consortium: The other major group, this one is backed by Intel, Samsung
and Dell and has over 50 members. Its working on creating a specification and a certification
program to ensure interoperability irrespective of form factor, OS and other variables.
Thread Group: The most recent alliance to be formed, Thread is backed by ARM Holdings,
Nest and Samsung. It is working on a mesh networking protocol.
Industrial Internet Consortium: In addition to supporting the Open Interconnect Consortium,
Intel is also supporting this group along with the remaining major players such as GE, IBM and
AT&T. The focus of this group is on enterprise IoT. It has formed a strategic liaison agreement
with the Open Interconnect Consortium.
IEEE P2413: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has long been the voice of
authority and expertise when it comes to setting up standards for new technologies. Not to be left
behind this time either, it has formed a working group and plans to finish its work by 2016.
All these competing groups working to solve the same problem may put off the decision makers
in your company because they dont want to end up with the Betamax version of IoT. But the
comparison is not correct since most of the building blocks are common to all the standards that
are being created. Also, as of now, there are millions of IoT devices operating in factories and
homes which predate these standards but are working just fine.

There are common building blocks that are going to be a part of any specification that emerges as
the market leader. Some of these common blocks are:
>To create highly scalable networking, existing standards such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, BLE,
RFID, ZigBee, Z-wave and IPv6 are widely used. 6LoWPAN, Weightless and 802.11ah are the
other emerging technologies that are being used by some device manufacturers.
>The ARM architecture is an open hardware platform and provides a shared, baseline technology
for creating networking-capable devices.
>XML and RDF are data standards that are widely used by the IoT industry which result in
interoperable applications and devices.
The industry in fact may never settle on just one standard. After all, most of us have at least
two browsers installed on our computers.

Myth 3 Internet of Things is not secure. My smart (and

evil) fridge could kill me!
Machines being able to operate autonomously and talk to each other have been a sci-fi staple for
as long as the genre has existed. So its no surprise that IoT would be associated with the sinister
(but fictional) villains such as HAL and Skynet.
Dystopian visions of a robotic voice coxing you to get into shape makes for good movie
material. Citizen Jones, you are exceeding your daily calorie requirement by consuming that
pie. Please desist or you will be reported for excess consumption. This could be the future of
IoT according to some conspiracy theorists who are sounding the alarm bells over the dangers of
Big Brother.

They fear that soon corporations and by extension the governments that control them can keep
track of not just where you are going by monitoring street cams but also what you eat, when you
sleep and how much heating you are using in your home.
The possibilities of such a scenario coming to life are remote since there are several privacy
advocates working to make sure our data stays out of a potential Big Brothers hands.
There have also been hacker attacks and data-breach incidents in the past 12 months which show
that the possibility of your smart TV or fridge being hacked is real. But the industry leaders are
already working on solving these issues and some of the issues have easy fixes.
One of the most common security issues was having an easy to guess default username and
password set by the device maker. Such issues were the result of manufacturers who wanted to
be the first in the market with their product. With the industry maturing, these issues are being

taken care of. In fact, the reason that most industry players have formed standards groups is to
create secure protocols for IoT devices and how they exchange data.
VPNs and DNS extensions are a part of the existing privacy standards and these can be adapted
to protect data as it moves between devices or in the cloud. Government regulations such as
HIPAA are also playing their part in forcing the industry to get its act together since the
protection of a persons medical information is a top priority for any healthcare organization.
Companies are also working on ways to secure the embedded processors, so that if they are
compromised, the attackers will still not be able to intercept data. On the network side, new
security protocols are being established to create end-to-end encryption and authenticate
sensitive data.

Myth 4 Internet of Things is feasible only for Fortune 100

companies. Its too big and complicated for SMEs.
This is the most persistent and entrenched myth about IoT. The truth is that open platforms and
low-cost sensors have made IoT solutions a cost-effective option for small businesses.

The costs of implementing IoT solutions continue to fall because of two key
reasons:

Falling hardware costs - The costs of microchips, accelerometers and GPS sensors
continue to fall as more companies start making them. Also, today's microchips are
capable of running more advanced software compared to their previous models.

Cloud solutions - Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are some of the companies offering
cloud services which can be used to host the huge amount of data generated by the
Internet of Things. Their plans are affordable even for SMEs.

Another myth that needs to be dispelled is that the data generated by IoT systems is always in
terabytes and petabytes. The amount of data generated is dependent upon the factory or office,
the number of devices connected to each other and what kind of information is being gathered. It
is also not true that an IoT device will be sending data 24/7. Many IoT devices will send data
only when there is a change in state; such as a light being switched on or off.
Open source is another reason that IoT solutions will continue to get cheaper. Most of the
innovations that we will be using will come from smaller companies and startups, while the
bigger companies will be providing the platforms. Given below is a short list of all the main
open source tools for the Internet of Things:

Development tools

Arduino

Kinoma

M2MLabs Mainspring

Node-RED

Hardware

Arduino Yn

BeagleBoard

Flutter

Local Motors Connected Car

Microduino

OpenPicus

Pinoccio

RasWIK

SODAQ

Tessel

UDOO

Home Automation Software

OpenHAB

The Thing System

Middleware

IoTSys

OpenIoT

Operating Systems

AllJoyn

Contiki

Raspbian

RIOT

Spark

Monitoring

Freeboard

Printing

Exciting Printer

Platforms and Integration Tools

DeviceHive

Devicehub.net

IoT Toolkit

Mango

Nimbits

OpenRemote

SiteWhere

ThingSpeak

Today most software and hardware makers understand that open source is what spurs innovation
and they allow companies to experiment and come up with new uses for their technology. So
companies planning to implement IoT systems can look forward to seeing this list grow.

Myth 5 Smartphones are the center of the IoT universe.

Most of the current IoT applications are mobile-centric but thats because the IoT ecosystem is
not yet fully mature. The focus is also on consumer oriented products and services which
results in the smartphone being used as a remote control. As more data-intensive applications are
found for IoT and implemented in the factories, the smartphone will get sidelined.
This is because the Internet of Things involves several components such as sensors, actuators and
processors that collect data and pass it through a network. When it comes to smart factories and
smart cities, the employees responsible for acting upon the data generated cannot be dependent
upon smartphones and cell coverage to make decisions in real-time.
By 2020, IoT will be the main reason for generating 22 times more data traffic compared to
today. To handle such huge data traffic, network engineers will have to put to use other wireless
networks that require lower power consumption, have a longer battery life and are cheaper.
The two main wireless networks that the IoT industry looks set to adopt are the Weightless
Standard and the IEEE 802.11ah protocols.
Weightless has two variants: Weightless-W and Weightless-N. Both of them offer the advantages
of low cost, low power consumption and good signal propagation. Weightless-N also has enough
connectivity capacity for most of the IoT uses and can be deployed immediately since it operates
in the free ISM (industrial, scientific and medical) spectrum. The IEEE 802.11ah wireless
networking protocol allows WLANs to handle hundreds of low-capability M2M devices that
have sporadic traffic needs.
The Internet of Things is constantly growing and expanding. Its been called the next industrial
revolution for good reason. At Softweb Solutions, we are working with both startups and
industry leaders on helping them create and implement IoT products and services. Working
together we can create the Internet of Things for your business.