Network and Application Layers

🔤 Acronyms? See the Glossary

Acklio's SCHC layer adapts the application protocols – BACnet, CoAP, DLMS, LwM2M, etc. – to IPv6 (IPv4) and the underlying IoT network technologies, enabling the use of TCP/IP protocol rules for the whole stack.

3️⃣ Network Layer

IP

Internet Protocol — The network communication protocol

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet.

IP has the task of delivering packets from the source host to the destination host solely based on the IP addresses in the packet headers. For this purpose, IP defines packet structures that encapsulate the data to be delivered. It also defines addressing methods that are used to label the datagram with source and destination information.

The Internet Protocol is responsible for addressing host interfaces, encapsulating data into datagrams (including fragmentation and reassembly) and routing datagrams from a source host interface to a destination host interface across one or more IP networks. For these purposes, the Internet Protocol defines the format of packets and provides an addressing system.

Each datagram has two components: a header and a payload.

• The IP header includes source IP address, destination IP address, and other metadata needed to route and deliver the datagram.
• The payload is the data that is transported.

Acklio

Adapting this mechanism to heterogeneous and proprietary LPWAN technologies to include IoT in the Internet is the strength of Acklio's solution.

4️⃣ Transport Layer

TCP

Transmission Control Protocol — The transport layer of TCP/IP

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the main protocols of the Internet protocol (IP) suite, actually the part of the Transport Layer of the TCP/IP suite. TCP provides reliable, ordered, and error-checked delivery of a stream of bytes between applications running on hosts communicating via an IP network.

TCP is connection-oriented, and a connection between client and server is established before data can be sent. The server must be listening (passive open) for connection requests from clients before a connection is established.

Applications that do not require reliable data stream service may use the User Datagram Protocol (See below).

UDP

User Datagram Protocol — A communication protocol

In computer networking, UDP is one of the core members of the Internet Protocol suite.

Prior communications are not required in order to set up communication channels or data paths. UDP uses a simple connectionless communication model with a minimum of protocol mechanisms.

UPD provides checksums for data integrity, and port numbers for adressing different functions at the source and destination of the datagram.

With UDP, computer applications can send messages, in this case referred to as "datagrams" to other hosts on an IP network.

SCTP

Stream Control Transmission Protocol — A communication protocol

SCTP is a computer networking communications protocol in the transport layer of the Internet protocol (IP) suite .

It provides the message-oriented feature of UDP, while ensuring reliable, in-sequence transport of messages with congestion control like TCP.

Unlike UDP and TCP, it provides multi-hosting and redundant paths to increase resilience and reliability.

5️⃣ Application

CoAP

Constrained Application Protocol — A communication protocol

CoAP is a specialized Internet application protocol for constrained devices, as defined in RFC 7252. It enables those constrained devices called "nodes" to communicate with the wider Internet using similar protocols.

CoAP is a service layer protocol that is intended for use between devices on the same constrained network (e.g., low-power, lossy networks), between devices and general nodes on the Internet, and between devices on different constrained networks both joined by an internet. CoAP is also being used via other mechanisms, such as SMS on mobile communication networks.

CoAP is designed to easily translate to HTTP for simplified integration with the web, while also meeting specialized requirements such as multicast support, very low overhead, and simplicity. Multicast, low overhead, and simplicity are important for Internet of things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication.

CoAP can run on most devices that support UDP or a UDP analogue.

BACnet

Building Automation and Control Networks — A communication protocol

BACnet is a communication protocol for Building Automation and Control (BAC) networks that was designed to allow communication of building automation and control systems for applications such as heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning control (HVAC), lighting control, access control, and fire detection systems and their associated equipment.

The BACnet specification incorporates several independent aspects, i.e. the specification of:

• The physical media that can be used and their conditions of use;
• The data and messages exchanged between client elements and server elements;
• The principles of exchanges between clients and servers, on an object basis;
• The services (access to objects, alarms and events, etc.) that can be used through the BACnet protocol. A BACnet network and a monitoring application are both fully object-oriented systems. Due to this intrinsic object logic, it is then possible to integrate them (make them communicate) natively, without going through a conversion between BACnet objects and supervision variables.

DLMS (IEC 62056)

Device Language Message Specification — A data exchange suite

DLMS is the suite of standards developed for electricity metering data exchange and maintained by the DLMS User Association (DLMS UA) and has been adopted into the IEC 62056 series of standards.

In DLMS/COSEM, all the data in electronic meters and devices are represented by means of mapping them to appropritate classes and related attribute values.

Any real-world thing mapped to an appropriate class type can be described by the attributes defined in the standard, and the methods defined therewith allow operations to be performed on the attributes. The attributes and methods constitute an object.

LwM2M

Light weight Machine 2 Machine — A communication protocol

LwM2M is a protocol from the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) for M2M or IoT device management and service enablement.

The LwM2M standard defines the application layer communication protocol between an LwM2M Server and an LwM2M client, which is located in an IoT device.

It allows devices and systems from different vendors to co-exist in an IoT-ecosystem. LwM2M was initially built on CoAP but later LwM2M versions also support additional transfer protocols. LwM2M capabilities include remote device management and services such as sensor and meter readings (among others).

Optimized with SCHC, LwM2M offers an unified, secure and energy-efficient device management. SCHC reduces the volume of data exchanged and brings fragmentation when needed.