Gateways: The Important Middleman We All Need?
— written by Francis on Sept. 9, 2024, 2:29 p.m.
No one likes falling victim to a middleman. They can rob you of your profit, cash, or both. However, can the middleman approach be beneficial in other areas?
First of all, what do I mean by the middleman approach? This is where there is an intermediate between the two endpoints. You may ask, "In what universe is this ever desirable?" To understand how it's important in IoT and other fields like networking, think of this scenario.
In most schools, students appoint one person to represent them before the administration. This is because it would be tedious and disorderly if each student was to represent themselves before the administration. Similarly, It would be easier if all IoT sensors in a system could access the IoT cloud via a central place. That's where Gateways come in.
GATEWAYS
They are the central place where all sensors in an IoT system communicate with the IoT cloud. They work similarly to the humble WiFi router. WiFi routers create a private network for devices connected within it and handle how devices communicate with other devices outside the network by assigning public IP addresses.
Gateways work similarly by collecting data from all sensors and routing it to the IoT cloud. However, since there are many protocols involved in IoT, Gateways have to translate protocols before forwarding them to the cloud.
However, they face a serious problem; sensors produce data continuously and not all the data is needed for processing in the cloud. Therefore, to save on bandwidth, gateways filter data and only forward the necessary data to the cloud for processing eg, temperatures in the normal room temperature range wouldn't be forwarded but any temperature outside the range will be forwarded to the cloud for processing in the case of a smart home system.
This saves on processing time and response time for the IoT system. Gateways are also used to provide a layer of security to the IoT system.
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