New industry alliance launched to promote use of IP in networks of smart objects 18 September, 2008 By Vanessa Ho

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Smart objects are objects in the physical world that - typically with the help of embedded devices - transmit information about their condition or environment (e.g., temperature, light, motion, health status) to locations where the information can be analyzed, correlated with other data and acted upon. Applications range from automated and energy-efficient homes and office buildings, factory equipment maintenance and asset tracking to hospital patient monitoring and safety and compliance assurance.

"We've been working on IP in smart objects for two years and when we started to look at these kind of networks, there was a plethora of proprietary protocols &[and] a lack of standardized protocols of where I can use IP in smart objects," said Jean-Philippe Vasseur, distinguished engineer at Cisco and chairman of the IPSO Alliance's Technical Advisory Board.

Intended to complement the efforts of entities such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), which develop and ratify technical standards in the Internet community, the IPSO Alliance will perform interoperability tests, document the use of new IP-based technologies, conduct marketing activities and serve as an information repository for users seeking to understand the role of IP in networks of physical objects. The alliance seeks to advocate how networks of objects of all types have the potential to be converged onto IP.

Vasseur added that what has prevented IP being used in smart objects in the past has been that vendors in this space thought that their proprietary protocol would become the de facto standard while others were ignorant of IP's use in smart objects.

"We needed to do something and we needed to have an organization to demonstrate the technology and document use cases," said Patrick Wetterwald, engineering manager with Cisco and president of the IPSO Alliance.

In addition, the IPSO Alliance hopes to also offer technical web seminars on a monthly basis that would explain what the technology is and educate participants on what they can do with it today.

Other founding members of the IPSO Alliance also include Arch Rock, Atmel, Cimetrics, Duke Energy, Dust Networks, EDF R&D, eka systems, Emerson, Freescale, IP Infusion, Jennic, Kinney Consulting, Nivis, PicosNet, Proto6, ROAM, SAP, Sensinode, SICS, Silver Spring Networks, Tampere University, Watteco and Zensys.

"We have a good balance of partners, so everyone can voice their opinion." said Vasseur. "We have large companies like Cisco and Sun, universities, end users and power utilities, where smart objects will be important to them."

Wetterwald hopes to increase their membership level to 50 by the end of the year and to 100 by next year.

IPSO Alliance membership is open to any organization advocating an IP-based approach to connecting smart objects. There are two levels of membership: Contributor members, who currently pay $2,500 per year, may use the Alliance's technical guidelines and case studies, participate in meetings and committees, demonstrate their products at meetings, trade shows and other Alliance events, and qualify their products and services in the interoperability program. Promoter members currently pay $5,000 per year and receive all of the benefits of contributor members but are also eligible to vote, serve on the Alliance's board of directors and chair committees.