An experimental evaluation of network reliability in a secure Internet of Things deployment.

The technological advances of the Internet of Things (IoT) have matured enough the last few years and real-world deployments in smart city and building environments have emerged. The IoT promises significant improvements in the everyday life of people, but its performance in real deployments has not been studied thoroughly, especially due to the fact that IoT devices, although constrained, are supposed to provide multiple concurrent services. This raises concerns for the performance of the IoT network, especially since IoT devices are mostly constrained and sensor networks cannot support high traffic. Additionally, when IoT devices are equipped with extra security mechanisms, their network performance might be downgraded, because the secure data transmissions require extra signalling, such as for encryption or integrity protection. This work discusses the network reliability of real IoT deployments, taking as example a deployment in Heraklion, Greece. The evaluation results follows also a discussion section with lessons learned.