Abstract

When installing massive amounts of Things into public networks care has to be taken to make installation simple, but at the same time secure so that the Things cannot be hijacked or hacked, making sure access to the Thing is controlled by the physical owner of the Thing. One of the main problems is how to match the characteristics of a Thing, like serial number, manufacturer, model, etc., with information automatically created by the Thing itself, like perhaps its JID, in an environment with massive amount of Things without rich user interfaces. Care has also to be taken when specifying rules for access rights and user privileges. This document provides a network architecture based on the XMPP protocol that provides a means to safely install, configure, find and connect massive amounts of Things together, and at the same time minimizing the risk that Things get hijacked. It also provides information how each individual step in the process can be performed with as little manual intervention as possible, aiming where possible at zero-configuration networking. Furthermore, this document specifies how to create a registry that allows simple access to public Things without risking their integrity unnecessarily.