SDN-based Multi-Protocol Edge Switching for IoT Service Automation

This paper proposes Muppet, an edge-based multiprotocol architecture for large scale IoT deployment and service automation. The crux of Muppet is a P4-based switch that inserts itself in between communicating IoT devices that can use different protocols. The switches are networked over IP to support wide area deployment, and managed using centralized SDN control for scalability. Muppet provides many of the benefits of both native peer-to-peer and widely used cloud-centric approaches, while avoiding their drawbacks. For example, Muppet offers lowlatency and low-energy benefits of the peer-to-peer approach, while enabling wide-area, cross-protocol automation similar to the cloud-based solutions. We describe the P4 design and prototype realization of the switch using two very popular, but widely disparate, IoT protocols, namely Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee. Through experiments, we show that Muppet is as efficient as peer-to-peer in terms of delay and energy usage, and scalable and programmable as cloud-based solutions. We illustrate its utility through practical use cases.