MODULE-1

Basics of Networking

1. Give the classification of types of Networks.

Ans: Computer networks are classified according to various parameters:
1) Type of connection,
2) physical topology, and
3) reach of the network.
2. Explain the classification of Networks based on connection types.
Ans: Depending on the way a host communicates with other hosts, computer networks are of two types
(i) Point-to-point and
(ii) Point-to-multipoint.
(i) Point-to-point:
1. Point-to-point connections are used to establish direct connections between two hosts.
2. Examples are remote control for an air conditioner or television is a point-to-point connection where
the connection has the whole channel dedicated to it only.
3. These networks were designed to work over duplex links and are functional for both synchronous
as well as asynchronous systems.
4. Regarding computer networks, point to point connections find usage for specific purposes such as
in optical networks.

(ii) Point-to-multipoint:
1. In a point-to-multipoint connection, more than two hosts share the same link.
2. This type of configuration is similar to the one-to-many connection type.
3. Point-to-multipoint connections find popular use in wireless networks and IP telephony.
4. The channel is shared between the various hosts either spatially or temporally. One common scheme
of spatial sharing of the channel is frequency division multiple access (FDMA). Temporal sharing
of channels includes approaches such as time division multiple access (TDMA).
5. Point-to-multipoint connections find popular use in present-day networks, especially while enabling
communication between a massive number of connected devices.
3. Differentiate between point-to-point and point-to-multipoint connections.
Ans:
Point-to-Point Point-to-Multipoint
1. Establish direct connections between two 1. More than two hosts share the same link.
hosts. This type of configuration is similar to the
2. Used for specific purposes such as in optical one-to-many connection type.
networks. 2. Used in wireless networks and IP telephony.
3. These networks were designed to work over 3. The channel is shared between the various
duplex links and are functional for both hosts either spatially or temporally.
synchronous as well as asynchronous systems.

4. Explain various network topologies with suitable diagrams and state its advantages and
disadvantages.
Ans: Depending on the physical manner in which communication paths between the hosts are
connected, computer networks can have the following four broad topologies—
1. Star,
2. Mesh,
3. Bus, and
4. Ring.
1. Star:
1. In a star topology, every host has a point-to-point link to a central controller or hub.
2. The hosts cannot communicate with one another directly; they can only do so through the central
hub.
3. The hub acts as the network traffic exchange.
4. For large-scale systems, the hub, essentially, has to be a powerful server to handle all the
simultaneous traffic flowing through it.
Advantages:
1. Cheap;
2. Ease of installation;
3. Ease of fault identification
Disadvantages:
1. Single point of failure;
2. Traffic visible to network entities

2. Mesh:
1. In a mesh topology, every host is connected to every other host using a dedicated link (in a point-to-
point manner).
2. This implies that for n hosts in a mesh, there are a total of n(n−1)/2 dedicated full duplex links between
the hosts.
3. The mesh networks are used very selectively, such as in backbone networks.
Advantages:
1. Resilient against single point of failures;
2. Scalable;
3. Traffic privacy and security ensured
Disadvantages:
1. Costly;
2. Complex connections

3. Bus:
1. A bus topology follows the point-to-multipoint connection.
2. A backbone cable or bus serves as the primary traffic pathway between the hosts.
3. The hosts are connected to the main bus employing drop lines or taps.
4. The bus topology has a simple cabling procedure in which a single bus (backbone cable) can be used
for an organization.
5. Multiple drop lines and taps can be used to connect various hosts to the bus.
 Advantages:
1. Ease of installation;
2. Cheap
Disadvantages:
1. Length of backbone cable
limited;
2. Number of hosts limited;
3. Hard to localize faults

4. Ring:
1. A ring topology works on the principle of a point-to-point connection.
2. Here, each host is configured to have a dedicated point-to-point connection with its two immediate
neighbouring hosts on either side of it through repeaters at each host.
3. The repetition of this system forms a ring.
4. The repeaters at each host capture the incoming signal intended for other hosts, regenerates the bit
stream, and passes it onto the next repeater.
Advantages:
1. Ease of installation;
2. Cheap;
3. Ease of fault identification
Disadvantages:
1. Prone to single point of failure

5. Compare the different types of networks topologies.

6. Explain the four broad categories of the network based on reachability.
Ans: Computer networks are divided into four broad categories based on network reachability:
1. Personal area networks,
2. Local area networks,
3. Wide area networks, and
4. Metropolitan area networks.
(i) Personal Area Networks (PAN):
1. PANs are mostly restricted to individual usage.
2. Examples of PANs are connected wireless headphones, wireless speakers, laptops, smartphones,
wireless keyboards, wireless mouse, and printers within a house.
3. PANs are wireless networks, which make use of low-range and low-power technologies such as
Bluetooth.
4. The reachability of PANs lies in the range of a few centimetres to a few meters.
(ii) Local Area Networks (LAN):
1. A LAN is a collection of hosts linked to a single network through wired or wireless connections.
2. LANs are restricted to buildings, organizations, or campuses.
3. A few leased lines connected to the Internet provide web access to the whole organization or a
campus; the lines are further redistributed to multiple hosts within the LAN enabling hosts.
4. LANs range from 100 Mbps to 1000 Mbps, with very high fault-tolerance levels.
5. Commonly used network components in a LAN are servers, hubs, routers, switches, terminals, and
computers.
(iii) Metropolitan Area Networks (MAN):
1. The reachability of a MAN lies between that of a LAN and a WAN.
2. MANs connect various organizations or buildings within a given geographic location or city.
3. Example of MAN is an Internet service provider (ISP) supplying Internet connectivity to various
organizations within a city.
4. As MANs are costly, they may not be owned by individuals or even single organizations.
5. Typical networking devices/components in MANs are modems and cables.
6. MANs tend to have moderate fault tolerance levels.
(iv) Wide Area Networks (WAN):
1. WANs typically connect diverse geographic locations. However, they are restricted within the
boundaries of a state or country.
2. The data rate of WANs is in the order of a fraction of LAN’s data rate.
3. Typically, WANs connecting two LANs or MANs may use public switched telephone networks
(PSTNs) or satellite-based links.
4. Due to the long transmission ranges, WANs tend to have more errors and noise during transmission
and are very costly to maintain. The fault tolerance of WANs are also generally low.
7. Explain OSI Model with the help of neat diagram.
Or with a neat diagram, explain the network communication between two hosts following the OSI
model.
Ans: The ISO-OSI model is a conceptual framework that partitions any networked communication
device into seven layers of abstraction, each performing distinct tasks based on the underlying
technology and internal structure of the hosts. These seven layers, from bottom-up, are as follows:
1) Physical layer
2) Data link layer
3) Network layer
4) Transport layer
5) Session layer
6) Presentation layer and
7) Application layer.
(i) Physical Layer:
1. This is a media layer and is also referred to as layer 1 of the OSI model.
2. The physical layer is responsible for taking care of the electrical and mechanical operations of the
host at the actual physical level.
3. These operations include or deal with issues relating to signal generation, signal transfer, voltages,
the layout of cables, physical port layout, line impedances, and signal loss.
4. This layer is responsible for the topological layout of the network (star, mesh, bus, or ring),
communication mode (simplex, duplex, full duplex), and bit rate control operations.
5. The protocol data unit associated with this layer is referred to as a symbol.
(ii) Data Link Layer:
1. This is a media layer and layer 2 of the OSI model.
2. The data link layer is mainly concerned with the establishment and termination of the connection
between two hosts, and the detection and correction of errors during communication between two
or more connected hosts.
3. The OSI layer 2 further into two sub-layers: Medium access control (MAC) and logical link
control (LLC). MAC is responsible for access control and permissions for connecting networked
devices; whereas LLC is mainly tasked with error checking, flow control, and frame
synchronization.
4. The protocol data unit associated with this layer is referred to as a frame.
(iii) Network Layer:
1. This layer is a media layer and layer 3 of the OSI model.
2. It provides a means of routing data to various hosts connected to different networks through logical
paths called virtual circuits.
 3. These logical paths may pass through other intermediate hosts (nodes) before reaching the actual
destination host.
4. The primary tasks of this layer include addressing, sequencing of packets, congestion control, error
handling, and Internetworking.
5. The protocol data unit associated with this layer is referred to as a packet.
(iv) Transport Layer:
1. This is layer 4 of the OSI model and is a host layer.
2. The transport layer is tasked with end-to-end error recovery and flow control to achieve a
transparent transfer of data between hosts.
3. This layer is responsible for keeping track of acknowledgments during variable-length data
transfer between hosts.
4. In case of loss of data, or when no acknowledgment is received, the transport layer ensures that
the particular erroneous data segment is re-sent to the receiving host.
5. The protocol data unit associated with this layer is referred to as a segment or datagram.
(v) Session Layer:
1. This is the OSI model’s layer 5 and is a host layer.
2. It is responsible for establishing, controlling, and terminating of communication between
networked hosts.
3. The session layer sees full utilization during operations such as remote procedure calls and remote
sessions.
4. The protocol data unit associated with this layer is referred to as data.
(vi) Presentation Layer:
1. This layer is a host layer and layer 6 of the OSI model.
2. It is mainly responsible for data format conversions and encryption tasks such that the syntactic
compatibility of the data is maintained across the network, for which it is also referred to as the
syntax layer.
3. The protocol data unit associated with this layer is referred to as data.
(vii) Application Layer:
1. This is layer 6 of the OSI model and is a host layer.
2. It is directly accessible by an end-user through software APIs (application program interfaces) and
terminals.
3. Applications such as file transfers, FTP (file transfer protocol), e-mails, and other such operations
are initiated from this layer.
4. The application layer deals with user authentication, identification of communication hosts,
quality of service, and privacy.
5. The protocol data unit associated with this layer is referred to as data.
 A networked communication between two hosts following the OSI model is shown in Figure below

8. Explain the communication protocol for TCP/IP suite with considering host A and host B with the
help of diagram.
Ans: The Internet protocol suite is conceptual framework that provides levels of abstraction for ease of
understanding and development of communication and networked systems on the Internet. The Internet
protocol suite provides four levels of abstraction.
1) Link layer
2) Internet layer
3) Transport layer and
4) Application layer.
(i) Link Layer:
1. The first and base layer of the TCP/IP protocol suite is also known as the network interface layer.
2. This layer is synonymous with the collective physical and data link layer of the OSI model.
3. It enables the transmission of TCP/IP packets over the physical medium.
4. According to its design principles, the link layer is independent of the medium in use, frame format,
and network access, enabling it to be used with a wide range of technologies such as the Ethernet,
wireless LAN, and the asynchronous transfer mode (ATM).
(ii) Internet Layer:
1. Layer 2 of the TCP/IP protocol suite is somewhat synonymous to the network layer of the OSI model.
2. It is responsible for addressing, address translation, data packaging, data disassembly and assembly,
routing, and packet delivery tracking operations.
3. Some core protocols associated with this layer are address resolution protocol (ARP), Internet protocol
(IP), Internet control message protocol (ICMP), and Internet group management protocol (IGMP).
(iii) Transport Layer:
1. Layer 3 of the TCP/IP protocol suite is functionally synonymous with the transport layer of the OSI
model.
2. This layer is tasked with the functions of error control, flow control, congestion control,
segmentation, and addressing in an end-to-end manner; it is also independent of the underlying
network.
3. Transmission control protocol (TCP) and user datagram protocol (UDP) are the core protocols upon
which this layer is built, which in turn enables it to have the choice of providing connection-oriented
or connectionless services between two or more hosts or networked devices.
(iv) Application Layer:
1. The functionalities of the application layer, layer 4, of the TCP/IP protocol suite are synonymous with
the collective functionalities of the OSI model’s session, presentation, and application layers.
2. This layer enables an end-user to access the services of the underlying layers and defines the protocols
for the transfer of data. Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), file transfer protocol (FTP), simple mail
transfer protocol (SMTP), domain name system (DNS), routing information protocol (RIP), and
simple network management protocol (SNMP) are some of the core protocols associated with this
layer.
A networked communication between two hosts following the TCP/IP model is shown in Figure below.
9. How is the Internet protocol suite different from the ISO-OSI model? Or Differentiate between OSI model
and TCP/IP model.

Differences between TCP/IP and OSI Model

TCP/IP OSI Model

The full form of TCP/IP is Transmission The full form of OSI is Open Systems
Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol. Interconnection.

It is a communication protocol that is based It is a structured model which deals which the
on standard protocols and allows the functioning of a network.
connection of hosts over a network.

In 1982, the TCP/IP model became the In 1984, the OSI model was introduced by the
standard language of ARPANET. International Organisation of Standardization
(ISO).

It comprises of four layers: It comprises seven layers:

• Network Interface • Physical

• Internet • Data Link
• Transport • Network
• Application • Transport
• Session
• Presentation
• Application

It follows a horizontal approach. It follows a vertical approach.

The TCP/IP is the implementation of the OSI An OSI Model is a reference model, based on
Model. which a network is created.

It is protocol-dependent. It is protocol-independent.
 Emergence of IoT
1. What is an IoT? Write the characteristics of IoT system.
Ans: Definition of IoT:
IoT is an anytime, anywhere, and anything network of Internet-connected physical devices or
systems capable of sensing an environment and affecting the sensed environment intelligently. This is
generally achieved using low-power and low-form-factor embedded processors on-board the “things”
connected to the Internet.
In other words, IoT may be considered to be made up of connecting devices, machines, and
tools; these things are made up of sensors/actuators and processors, which connect to the Internet
through wireless technologies.
Characterised features of IoT:
IoT systems can be characterized by the following features:
1. Associated architectures, which are also efficient and scalable.
2. No ambiguity in naming and addressing.
3. Massive number of constrained devices, sleeping nodes, mobile devices, and non-IP devices.
4. Intermittent and often unstable connectivity.
2. Discuss the evolution of IoT. Or explain the sequence of technological developments leading to
the shape of modern day IoT.
Ans: Evolution of IoT:
The IoT is a result of a series of technological paradigm shifts over a few decades. The Figure below
shows the sequence of technological advancements for shaping the IoT as it is today. These sequence
of technical developments toward the emergence of IoT.

• ATM:
2. ATMs or automated teller machines are cash distribution machines, which are linked to a user’s
bank account and dispense cash upon verification of the identity of a user and their account through
a specially coded card.
3. The central concept behind ATMs was the availability of financial transactions even when banks
were closed beyond their regular work hours.
4. The first ATM became operational and connected online for the first time in 1974.
• Web:
1. World Wide Web is a global information sharing and communication platform.
2. The Web became operational for the first time in 1991. Since then, it has been massively responsible
for the many revolutions in the field of computing and communication.
• Smart Meters:
1. The earliest smart meter was a power meter, which became operational in early 2000.
2. These power meters were capable of communicating remotely with the power grid.
3. They enabled remote monitoring of subscribers’ power usage and eased the process of billing and
power allocation from grids.
• Digital Locks:
1. Digital locks can be considered as one of the earlier attempts at connected home-automation
systems. They are so robust that smartphones can be used to control them.
2. Operations such as locking and unlocking doors, changing key codes, including new members in
the access lists, can be easily performed, and that too remotely using smartphones.
• Connected Healthcare:
1. Healthcare devices connect to hospitals, doctors, and relatives to alert them of medical emergencies
and take preventive measures.
2. The devices may be simple wearable appliances, monitoring just the heart rate and pulse of the
wearer, as well as regular medical devices and monitors in hospitals.
3. The connected nature of these systems makes the availability of medical records and test results
much faster, cheaper, and convenient for both patients as well as hospital authorities.
• Connected Vehicles:
1. Connected vehicles may communicate to the Internet or with other vehicles, or even with sensors
and actuators contained within it.
2. These vehicles self-diagnose themselves and alert owners about system failures.
• Smart Cities:
1. This is a city-wide implementation of smart sensing, monitoring, and actuation systems.
2. The city-wide infrastructure communicating amongst themselves enables unified and synchronized
operations and information dissemination.
3. Some of the facilities which may benefit are parking, transportation, and others.
• Smart Dust:
1. These are microscopic computers. Smaller than a grain of sand each, they can be used in numerous
beneficial ways, where regular computers cannot operate.
2. For example, smart dust can be sprayed to measure chemicals in the soil or even to diagnose
problems in the human body.
• Smart Factories:
1. These factories can monitor plant processes, assembly lines, distribution lines, and manage factory
floors all on their own.
 2. The reduction in mishaps due to human errors in judgment or unoptimized processes is drastically
reduced.
• UAVs:
UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles have emerged as robust public domain solutions tasked with
applications ranging from agriculture, surveys, surveillance, deliveries, stock maintenance, asset
management, and other tasks.
3. With a neat diagram, explain the various technological interdependencies of IoT.
Ans: Various technological interdependencies of IoT:
Figure below shows the various technological interdependencies of IoT with other domains and
networking paradigms such as M2M, CPS, the Internet of environment (IoE), the Internet of people
(IoP), and Industry 4.0.

(i) M2M:
1. The M2M or the machine-to-machine paradigm signifies a system of connected machines and
devices, which can talk amongst themselves without human intervention.
2. The communication between the machines can be for updates on machine status (stocks, health,
power status, and others), collaborative task completion, overall knowledge of the systems and the
environment, and others.
(ii) CPS:
1. The CPS or the cyber physical system paradigm insinuates a closed control loop—from sensing,
processing, and finally to actuation—using a feedback mechanism.
2. CPS helps in maintaining the state of an environment through the feedback control loop, which
ensures that until the desired state is attained, the system keeps on actuating and sensing.
3. Humans have a simple supervisory role in CPS-based systems; most of the ground-level operations
are automated.
(iii) IoE:
1. The IoE paradigm is mainly concerned with minimizing and even reversing the ill-effects of the
permeation of Internet-based technologies on the environment.
 2. The major focus areas of this paradigm include smart and sustainable farming, sustainable and
energy-efficient habitats, enhancing the energy efficiency of systems and processes, and others.
3. In brief, we can safely assume that any aspect of IoT that concerns and affects the environment, falls
under the purview of IoE.
(iv) Industry 4.0:
1. Industry 4.0 is commonly referred to as the fourth industrial revolution pertaining to digitization in
the manufacturing industry.
2. The previous revolutions chronologically dealt with mechanization, mass production, and the
industrial revolution, respectively.
3. This paradigm strongly puts forward the concept of smart factories, where machines talk to one
another without much human involvement based on a framework of CPS and IoT.
4. The digitization and connectedness in Industry 4.0 translate to better resource and workforce
management, optimization of production time and resources, and better upkeep and lifetimes of
industrial systems.
(v) IoP:
1. IoP is a new technological movement on the Internet which aims to decentralize online social
interactions, payments, transactions, and other tasks while maintaining confidentiality and privacy
of its user’s data.
2. A famous site for IoP states that as the introduction of the Bitcoin has severely limited the power of
banks and governments, the acceptance of IoP will limit the power of corporations, governments,
and their spy agencies.
3. Differentiate between IoT and M2M.
Ans: IoT versus M2M
1. M2M or the machine-to-machine paradigm refers to communications and interactions between
various machines and devices.
2. These interactions can be enabled through a cloud computing infrastructure, a server, or simply a
local network hub.
3. M2M collects data from machinery and sensors, while also enabling device management and device
interaction.
4. Telecommunication services providers introduced the term M2M, and technically emphasized on
machine interactions via one or more communication networks (e.g., 3G, 4G, 5G, satellite, public
networks).
5. M2M is part of the IoT and is considered as one of its sub-domains.
6. M2M standards occupy a core place in the IoT landscape.
7. However, in terms of operational and functional scope, IoT is vaster than M2M and comprises a
broader range of interactions such as the interactions between devices/things, things, and people,
things and applications, and people with applications;
 8. M2M enables the amalgamation of workflows comprising such interactions within IoT.
9. Internet connectivity is central to the IoT theme but is not necessarily focused on the use of telecom
networks.
4. Differentiate between IoT and CPS.
Ans: IoT versus CPS
1. Cyber physical systems (CPS) encompass sensing, control, actuation, and feedback as a complete
package.
2. In other words, a digital twin is attached to a CPS-based system.
3. A digital twin is a virtual system–model relation, in which the system signifies a physical system
or equipment or a piece of machinery, while the model represents the mathematical model or
representation of the physical system’s behaviour or operation.
4. A digital twin is used parallel to a physical system, especially in CPS as it allows for the
comparison of the physical system’s output, performance, and health.
5. Based on feedback from the digital twin, a physical system can be easily given corrective
directions/commands to obtain desirable outputs.
6. In contrast, the IoT paradigm does not compulsorily need feedback or a digital twin system.
7. IoT is more focused on networking than controls. Some of the constituent sub-systems in an IoT
environment (such as those formed by CPS-based instruments and networks) may include
feedback and controls too.
8. In this light, CPS may be considered as one of the sub-domains of IoT.
5. Differentiate between IoT and WoT.
Ans: IoT versus WoT
1. The Web of Things (WoT) paradigm enables access and control over IoT resources and
applications which are generally built using technologies such as HTML 5.0, JavaScript, Ajax,
PHP, and others.
2. REST (representational state transfer) is one of the key enablers of WoT. The use of RESTful
principles and RESTful APIs (application program interface) enables both developers and
deployers to benefit from the recognition, acceptance, and maturity of existing web technologies
without having to redesign and redeploy solutions from scratch.
3. As IoT is focused on creating networks comprising objects, things, people, systems, and
applications, which often do not consider the unification aspect and the limitations of the Internet,
the need for WoT, which aims to integrate the various focus areas of IoT into the existing Web is
really invaluable.
4. Technically, WoT can be thought of as an application layer-based hat added over the network layer.
5. However, the scope of IoT applications is much broader; IoT also which includes non-IP-based
systems that are not accessible through the web.
6. Explain, with a suitable diagram, IoT planes wrt complex interdependence of technologies.
Ans: Enabling IoT and the Complex Interdependence of Technologies:
IoT is a paradigm built upon complex interdependencies of technologies, which occur at various planes
of this paradigm. The IoT paradigm can be divided into four planes:
1. Services
2. Local connectivity
3. Global connectivity and
4. Processing.

1. Services:
The service plane is composed of two parts:
1) things or devices and
2) low-power connectivity.
(i) The things may be wearables, computers, smartphones, household appliances, smart glasses,
factory machinery, vending machines, vehicles, UAVs, robots, and other such contraptions (which
may even be just a sensor).
 (ii) The immediate low-power connectivity, which is responsible for connecting the things in local
implementation, may be legacy protocols such as WiFi, Ethernet, or cellular. In contrast, modern-
day technologies are mainly wireless and often programmable such as Zigbee, RFID, Bluetooth,
6LoWPAN, LoRA, DASH, Insteon, and others.
(iii)The range of these connectivity technologies is severely restricted; they are responsible for the
connectivity between the things of the IoT and the nearest hub or gateway to access the Internet.
2. The local connectivity:
(i) The local connectivity is responsible for distributing Internet access to multiple local IoT
deployments, on the basis of the physical placement of the things, the application domains, or
even on the basis of providers of services.
(ii) Services such as address management, device management, security, sleep scheduling, and others
fall within the scope of this plane.
(iii)The modern-day “edge computing” paradigm is deployed in conjunction with these first two
planes: services and local connectivity.
3. Global Connectivity:
(i) Global connectivity plays a significant role in enabling IoT in the real sense by allowing for
worldwide implementations and connectivity between things, users, controllers, and applications.
(ii) This plane also falls under the purview of IoT management as it decides how and when to store
data, when to process it, when to forward it, and in which form to forward it.
(iii)The Web, data-centers, remote servers, Cloud, and others make up this plane.
(iv) The paradigm of “fog computing” lies between the planes of local connectivity and global
connectivity.
(v) It often serves to manage the load of global connectivity infrastructure by offloading the
computation nearer to the source of the data itself, which reduces the traffic load on the global
Internet.
4. Processing:
(i) The final plane of processing is a top-up of the basic IoT networking framework.
(ii) The continuous rise in the usefulness and penetration of IoT in various application areas such as
industries, transportation, healthcare, and others is the result of this plane.
(iii)The members in this plane may be termed as IoT tools, simply because they wring-out useful and
human-readable information from all the raw data that flows from various IoT devices and
deployments.
(iv) The various sub-domains of this plane include intelligence, conversion (data and format
conversion, and data cleaning), learning (making sense of temporal and spatial data patterns),
cognition (recognizing patterns and mapping it to already known patterns), algorithms (various
control and monitoring algorithms), visualization (rendering numbers and strings in the form of
collective trends, graphs, charts, and projections), and analysis (estimating the usefulness of the
 generated information, making sense of the information with respect to the application and place
of data generation, and estimating future trends based on past and present patterns of information
obtained).
(v) Various computing paradigms such as “big data”, “machine Learning”, and others, fall within the
scope of this domain.
7. Explain various networking components of IoT.
Ans: IoT Networking Components:
An IoT implementation is composed of several components, which may vary with their
application domains. The establishment of any IoT network is classified into six types:
1) IoT node,
2) IoT router,
3) IoT LAN,
4) IoT WAN,
5) IoT gateway, and
6) IoT proxy.
A typical IoT implementation from a networking perspective is shown in Figure below.

(i) IoT Node:

1. These are the networking devices within an IoT LAN which are made up of a sensor, a processor, and a
radio, which communicates with the network infrastructure (either within the LAN or outside it).
2. The nodes may be connected to other nodes inside a LAN directly or by means of a common gateway
for that LAN. Connections outside the LAN are through gateways and proxies.
(ii) IoT Router:
1. An IoT router is a piece of networking equipment that is primarily tasked with the routing of packets
between various entities in the IoT network; it keeps the traffic flowing correctly within the network.
2. A router can be repurposed as a gateway by enhancing its functionalities.
(iii) IoT LAN:
1. The local area network (LAN) enables local connectivity within the purview of a single gateway as they
consist of short-range connectivity technologies.
2. IoT LANs may or may not be connected to the Internet. Generally, they are localized within a building
or an organization.
(iv) IoT WAN:
1. The wide area network (WAN) connects various network segments such as LANs and are
organizationally and geographically wide, with their operational range lying between a few kilometres
to hundreds of kilometres.
2. IoT WANs connect to the Internet and enable Internet access to the segments they are connecting.
(v) IoT Gateway:
1. An IoT gateway is simply a router connecting the IoT LAN to a WAN or the Internet.
2. Gateways can implement several LANs and WANs. Their primary task is to forward packets between
LANs and WANs, and the IP layer using only layer 3.
(vi) IoT Proxy:
1. Proxies actively lie on the application layer and performs application layer functions between IoT nodes
and other entities.
2. Typically, application layer proxies are a means of providing security to the network entities under it ; it
helps to extend the addressing range of its network.