OSI Layer 0

The common wisdom is the 7 OSI layers define everything in the communications link to make the two ends interoperable and able to talk. At Silvair we've been especially stressing the importance of the application layer that seems to be forgotten by the proponents of WiFi and IPv6.

But OSI does not cover one very important prerequisite. The onboarding / provisioning process, which can be considered the "Layer 0". It simply assumes devices are already on the same network. Somehow "magically". Unfortunately for real products there is no magic. Devices have to be brought on a network before they can engage the full 7 layers to start a dialog.

The onboarding process is a yet another elephant in the IoT room. Some seem to notice it. Both Thread and HomeKit focus on the onboarding part, enforcing numeric code labels on products. Others, like AllJoyn, ignore it completely. AllJoyn has just introduced the new Security 2.0, which is great but simply ignores the fact there is a WiFi network underneath any AllJoyn node. IoTivity tries to address the Provisioning process in the 1.0.0 Multi-Phy Easy Setup, which again relies on the fact the underlying WiFi network is there and will NEVER change the password.

So far only three standards have solved the onboarding process to the extent that allowed a broad roll out of compatible products. The 1st was Z-Wave: switch a controller toinclusion mode and activate your device. The 2nd was ZigBee LightLink with the proximity - based TouchLink that relies on a secret golden key. The 3rd and most common today is Bluetooth, with the precisely defined pairing process.

Everything else so far is proprietary and requires device specific procedures. It is almost like in the Internet of Humans: there is no standard onboarding process if you want to join a Cloud service. The difference is humans are smart enough to navigate the custom procedures. Things are not and require onboarding to be completely defined by a standard.