3.1.2 Connecting things for consumers
How does connecting things impact us in our personal life? For example, consider the current structure of the average home network.
The home network is a LAN with devices that connect to the home router. Most likely, the router also has wireless capabilities. In this instance, the LAN provides wireless LAN (WLAN) access. Figure 1 shows a typical home WLAN with a connection to the internet through a local internet service provider (ISP). The collection of devices and connections within the ISP are not visible to the home-based customer but are critical for connectivity to the Internet.
The local ISP connects with other ISPs, allowing access to websites and content around the world. These ISPs connect to each other using various technologies that include WAN technologies, as shown in Figure 2.
However, the M2M connection is a network type unique to the IoT. Figure 3 depicts a series of fire alarms or home security sensors that can communicate with each other and send data through the gateway router (home router) to a server environment in the Cloud. Here data can be accumulated and analyzed.