How to see through the Fog? Using Peer to Peer (P2P) for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) faces the challenge of scaling to handle tens of billions of connected devices. This challenge is made more difficult by the range of constituent IoT parts from Cloud-based applications to constrained nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Achieving the desired scale and interoperability requires an architecture for IoT that is scalable and allows seamless operation across networks and devices. This paper considers the requirements for IoT and considers a number of existing architectural approaches and the emergence of Fog computing. It proposes that Fog computing architectures must cater for the flow of data from constrained sensor nodes to powerful applications. It considers the suitability of a Peer to Peer (P2P) approach for Fog computing. Using a prototype implementation, it demonstrates how a Holistic Peer to Peer (HPP) architecture and application layer protocol meet the requirements set for IoT.