Updates are EasyHard

Chasing features and updates is our everyday life. I have an Android tablet in my car and everyday when I commute to work, it keeps updating some apps or parts of the system. It connects via a free 3G data (Aero2) which works well but has throughput limited to 64Kbps. Sometimes I wonder if 64K for 1-2 hours a day is enough to keep the system up to date...

While the frequent updates are accepted for personal devices (laptops, tablets, phones), they are a completely different challenge for IoT systems. For two reasons:

1. The IoT networks are narrowband by nature. Some, like SigFox, run extremely limited data rates. Low data rates are perfectly fine to transport sensor data or simple control commands, but are way too slow to perform application updates on the nodes. Even 802.15.4 - based networks, running at 250kbps can easily saturate for long periods when doing over-the-air updates.
2. Many IoT devices are supposed to run uninterrupted. Firmware upgrade almost always requires a reboot. So some functions for some period of time are lost. This may have some security implications or at least has a potential to frustrate users. So has to be planned carefully. And there is always a risk a device will not wake up after reset.
3. While it seems the need for upgrading firmware may be limited and systems should be left running as they are, security updates are the other side of the coin. While I am proud my home server has just click 687 days uptime of uninterrupted flawless run, I realize there must have been a dozen of security updates I should have applied to it.

Looking at this perspective, the software update problem for IoT devices is easy-hard. It seems easy on the surface (most vendors will claim their devices are in-field upgradable), but to execute it properly many issues are to be solved.