Deploying reliable configuration data to IoT devices on named data networks

Abstract

A management system of a large network of IoT devices would benefit from an automatic process to deploy configuration data to those devices. Such a process could be used both for initial deployment of multiple devices to the network as well as being used to update configuration data on devices already in use. In this paper, we implement the initial configuration steps and security bootstrapping as described by Kai Lei et al.[1]. We implement a lightweight distributed blockchain ledger and a lightweight consensus protocol capable of running on a Named Data Network, which is used to distribute and store configuration data on resource constrained devices. We create a configuration deployment scenario where we deploy configuration data to a network and use the data to allow devices to validate incoming data packets. Finally we construct an emulation environment composed of a simulated Named Data Network and a physical ESP8266 microcontroller and use it to emulate and measure the performance of our implementations.