/2020-06-helsinki

T2TRG/W3C work meeting originally to take place in Helsinki, now online

2020-06-helsinki

IRTF T2TRG/W3C WoT work meeting, 2020-06-08 (originally to take place in Helsinki)

In the Internet of Things (IoT), billions of new devices are being connected to the Internet. At this scale, manual configuration is no longer affordable. Devices need to make available self-descriptive information, and the systems using them need to discover and make use of this information, without the need for extensive human intervention.

A first set of standards for self-description and discovery has been completed by IETF and W3C. How can these specifications best be used? What are the gaps that still need to be addressed? How can discovery be made secure and private, so that it doesn't disclose too much information and isn't susceptible to attacks? How can the semantic information that guides discovery be structured in a way that maximizes interoperability, in particular where usage needs to cross different IoT ecosystems? How can self-description and discovery be used to actually enhance security?

The Internet Research Task Force (IRTF) Thing to Thing Research group (T2TRG), and the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) Interest Group (IG) on the Web of Things (WoT) are meeting online for a workshop on self-description and discovery on Monday, June 08, 2020. The meeting was originally scheduled to take place physically in Helsinki, with the date chosen to coordinate with a number of other events, in particular the 20th International Conference on Web Engineering (ICWE 2020), which also was to take place in Helsinki, on Tuesday, June 09, to Friday, June 12. It is now taking place online, on the originally planned day, from 1200Z (12:00 UTC) to 1500Z.

Participation in the workshop is open to IoT developers and researchers free of charge, but we ask you to register by Monday June 1st, to help planning with the logistics: https://forms.gle/R33E7J3qM6nYLfQD8

Approximate Agenda

Webex: https://ietf.webex.com/ietf/j.php?MTID=m16cc27a1b70c01d7d0bad4ed65b637db

Time (UTC) Subject Who
1200Z Welcome, Logistics Chairs
1210Z WoT Update Michael McCool/Sebastian Käbisch
Use Case Process and Overview Michael Lagally
1220Z Lifecycle Michael Lagally
Discussion
1250Z WoT Discovery Michael McCool
Discussion
1320Z --- Break ---
1340Z WoT PoC Progress
Retail Michael McCool/David Ezell
Smart City Michael McCool/Jennifer Lin
1400Z OneDM/TD Integration Michael Koster/Sebastian Käbisch
TD Templates; Modularity
Discussion
1430Z Hypermedia Controls in TDs and beyond (+ impact on RESTful design) Victor Charpenay/Ege Korkan
Actions and Events, Handling URLs
Discussion
1500Z Wrapup, end of meeting Chairs

View workshop time in various timezones

Obtain calendar invitation file (.ics)

Freezer

Some topics will not fit into the 3-hour format necessitated by the online nature (which is already bursting at the seams). So we are likely to set up another joint meeting in the future.

Specifically, we would like to discuss formats and languages for data definition ("schema languages"), as they are used in various emerging IoT specifications where JSON-like generic data models are employed. We plan to invite authors of the relevant proposals and standards.

Collecting current and future T2TRG/WoT Workshop Topics

  • Discovery
    • State, information, and metadata being discovered
    • Preserving privacy
      • Issues, i.e. Avoidance of fingerprinting in web browser
      • Two-phase protocol WoT proposal
      • Multiple actors, secret-handshake problem, authentication, authorization
    • Use of existing directory services, i.e.
      • CoRE RD/CoRAL
      • WoT Thing Directory/SPARQL/Keyword/Templates
    • Use of existing introduction mechanisms, i.e.
      • Eddystone beacons
      • mDNS/DNS-SD/Zeroconf
      • DHCP
      • QR/Barcodes/NFC (GS1)
    • New standards needed
      • Location-based DNS
    • Semantic discovery
      • ODM and other semantic schematics
      • Query languages (SPARQL, GRAPHQL, JSONPath (LinkSmart), XPath 3.1)
      • Data Modeling
        • Whither JSON Schema?
        • ODM
  • Lifecycle
    • Onboarding
      • State and information being managed
      • Access control and authentication management
      • Interaction with existing ecosystems
      • Registration with directories for discovery
      • Relationship to discovery, mutual authorization problem
    • Information and Device states
      • RFC8576
      • WoT Architecture
    • Offboarding/decomissioning
      • How to deal with non-responsive devices?
      • Non-retrievable decommissioning vs. factory reset vs. maintenance updates