More Than 3 Use cases of IOT, building on StaceyOnIOT's post

On Aug 19, 2019 Stacey On IOT posted on three different version of IOT. Where she discussed Consumer, Enterprise, and Industrial use cases. I was going to post, but did not. Stacey followed up today with another post with user feedback and the idea of adding two more use cases for Military and Healthcare.

Across these now five different use cases what is common approach that could be used? An approach that have been using to look at some other systems is a combination of hexagonal architecture, ports and adapters and domain driven design. Ok. Lost all of you there.

Hexagonal architecture is

The hexagonal architecture divides a system into several loosely-coupled interchangeable components, such as the application core, the database, the user interface, test scripts and interfaces with other systems. This approach is an alternative to the traditional layered architecture.

Ports and Adapters is

The main idea of Ports & Adapters is to define the structure of an application so that it could be run by different kinds of clients (humans, tests cases, other applications,…), and it could be tested in isolation from external devices of the real world that the application depends on (databases, servers, other applications, …).

Domain Driven Design is

Domain-driven design is predicated on the following goals:

  • placing the project's primary focus on the core domain and domain logic;

  • basing complex designs on a model of the domain;

  • initiating a creative collaboration between technical and domain experts to iteratively refine a conceptual model that addresses particular domain problems.

OK still lost you. The use cases of consumer, industrial, enterprise, military and healthcare are domains that are at the center of the architecture. The interaction with IOT and users is what drives the ports and adapters to the domain core, then gets passed on to ports and adapters for the infrastructure. This same system design can treat of the different uses as simply different iterations of the same design approach.

This is a complex topic, but can be elegantly simple. But explaining the simplicity takes a lot more words. :-)

StorageMojo blog went into Hiatus after over 10 years of blogging

StorageMojo was one of the leading blogs on storage. I had the pleasure to meet Robin Harris the owner of StorageMojo at a storage conference and he is a genuine person who wanted to change the storage industry. Robin’s last post is here.

Times have changed and Robin makes a good observation.

Looking back, I started StorageMojo at a propitious time, catching the wave of scale-out storage, SSDs, advanced erasure codes, and cloud, where intelligent commentary was eagerly consumed, and advertising was still a useful adjunct for a one-man consultancy. Times were good, and the Great Recession was something I only read about.

Robin still writes about storage on ZDNET and here is one of his latest post that discusses emerging storage technologies.

IT executives face a constant barrage of "new and improved" product claims. But data storage has changed more in the last 10 years than in the prior 25, and the rate of change is accelerating: We'll see more change in the next decade than we've ever seen before in computer data storage. Here's what's coming that you need to know.

Understanding what is coming -- some in the next few months -- will position savvy technology leaders to be proactive, value-added change agents. The innovations are real and fundamental, affecting how data centers are architected and managed, as well as enabling incredible new applications.

Scooter company Spin deploys at Virginia Tech with lots of sensors and cameras to gain insight

Wired has an article on scooter company Spin working with Virginia Tech to understand the use of scooters.

It’s also an 18-month research project. Of the 300 scooters that Spin will drop upon the 4-square-mile campus next week, 50 will be wired with sensors—gyroscopes, accelerometers, and forward-facing cameras—designed to record very specific data about how the two-wheeled vehicles are moving through space. At least 20 cameras will also stud the campus, to observe scooter riders in their natural habitat.

Ford could be a player in mobile electric transportation. The data they get could enable addressing many other issues in transportation and other services.

Ford has had previous success with scooter-based research. In the fall of 2018, the automaker’s mobility division quietly launched a scooter service on the campus of Purdue University in Indiana. The research there convinced Ford that scooters were viable from a business perspective, says Sweeney—helping justify its purchase of Spin, for a reported $100 million. With more questions to answer, the automaker turned scooter operator is heading back to school.

Troubleshooting and replacing cable modem, Router/Firewall, and main network switch in past 6 months

I run an enterprise class home network to provide a good home office network and support my family. For Internet the provider is Comcast Business and with my owned Arris modem SB6141 which is the latest device that was going bad and was replaced with a Motorola MB7220. Main thing I like about the MB7220 besides the fact that it works is it has security features much better than the SB6141. Logging on to the cable modem I was getting codeword errors. My modem was 5 years old so it was possible my modem was failing but before replacing the modem I went through the coax cables for the house. As part of cutting the cord and dropping cable TV set top boxes I had splitters, amplifiers, and filters that were needed to make the Xfinity cable boxes work. Since switching to PlayStation Vue I can now get rid of all that stuff and have a straight connection to the cable modem.

After making these changes, the cable modem was still having errors and continuing to reboot once a day. Luckily I had bought another modem from Amazon and had it delivered, getting another 8x4 cable modem. Swapped the modem out yesterday. Working great. The signal strength on the downstream and upstream look strong and little noise, and no errors! Looking through the cable modem logs everything looks good.

A couple of months before that WiFi went down. Had connections to WiFi. Checking the IP addresses on devices could see 169.x.x.x which means no IP address. The DHCP server was down which runs on the Netgate Pfsense SG-2220 router firewall appliance. It’s been three years, running 24x7. Swapping out another router firewall the WiFi was back up and running. Went into console to talk directly to the hardware and it was definitely the problem. Bought another Netgate appliance, the SG-3100 which is an ARM processor whereas the SG-2220 was an Intel Atom. The ARM processor SG-3100 feels like it has 4X more performance than the SG-2220.

And a couple of months before that my Unifi POE switch that I had in the network went bad. Got some strange network behaviors like provisioned access points being identified as rogue devices. Taking out the Unifi Switch and moving everything over to a Netgear managed POE switch resolved the issue.

So over 6 months I have replaced my cable modem, replaced my router/firewall, and removed a bad Unifi switch. The nice thing is I could troubleshoot the network issues. Identify the problems and replace the gear. The key was to have other gear I could swap in and see if it resolved the issues. In the process of doing this I have been thinking about upgrading the backbone of my home network to optical fiber.

This may seem complicated, but each of these are components of a home network and there are management consoles that can give you information. This information is free. It is your choice whether you want to work with it and use it. Every device and user leaves a trail of their use of the network.