Billions of connected devices are already deployed. It seems like IoT will be a trending topic for a long time.
The importance of IoT and all these connected devices is undeniable. They’re making a huge transformation in our lives and in business. So IoT is a big challenge for digital transformation and an important part in Digital Age Networking.
I. IoT containment and security capabilities.
The Alcatel-Lucent IoT containment solution is designed to provide an automated solution to securely onboard IoT devices while protecting the network at the same time.
How does it work?
Three-steps should be followed to connect, manage and properly control IoT devices: Discover, segment, and Continuous monitoring.
Figure I – Three steps to know
II. Three steps to know
Step one: Discover and classify
At first, all connected device on the network must be discovered and classified. To define network
requirements and policies one needs to know which IoT devices are attached to the network. This is a key step in guaranteeing quality of service, security, and bandwidth parameters to deliver a positive quality of experience (QoE).
These parameters are added to ones profile. This service will be automatically created by the network to facilitate the end-to-end QoE management.
To simplify network configuration, Alcatel-Lucent Digital Age Network provides the possibility to access a large device database. The network will be able to easily identify the connected devices on the Network and will provision them automatically.
Step 2: segmentation
The traffic or a specific IoT device is contained to a single instance and can be easily blocked from communicating with others portions of the network. Segmentation is created for t
he application to which the device needs to connect and is automatically provisioned into the network.
The Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise IoT containment solution delivers substantial benefit.
The solution virtually segments the physical infrastructure to make sure each object connected to the network receives the right quality of services (QoS), bandwidth, and security. The network leverages the user, object, and application profiling capabilities to easily and automatically create and assign virtual networks to each IoT device, making sure only the right application can run within a container.
Step 3: Continual monitoring
The network requires continual monitoring for behavior analysis to ensure that the IoT devices and applications are functioning as expected.
Each authorized device is stored in an inventory. IT knows exactly and instantly how many devices are connected to the network facilitating dynamic IoT inventory.
That inventory list can be leveraged for asset tracking and to dynamically create user network profiles (UNPs) to virtually enable the wired (OmniSwitch) and wireless (Stellar) network infrastructure to securely handle the communication and traffic prioritization capabilities for the IoT connected devices.
In the next article about Digital Age Networking, I’ll speak about Augmented Intelligence that comes form AI, data analytics and machine learning.
You can find our blog posts about DAN and IoT here:
- Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise Service Defined Network: to easily and securely connect people and devices – Part two written by Fabrice Lieuvin
- Digital Age Networking – Part one
- Augmented intelligence & IoT fingerprinting optimize networks – By Felipe Soriano
You can also download the full Whitepaper about DAN following this link.
