New Broadband Protocol Turns Routers into IoT Gateways

#News(IoTStack) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Managed networks company Greenwave Systems has begun providing a solution that brings the Internet of Things (IoT) into homes using a new application service protocol from the Broadband Forum. The User Services Platform (USP) serves as a standardized protocol to allow companies to manage, monitor, update and control connected devices, services and home networks. Greenwave’s AXON software platform uses the USP, and aims to enable internet service providers (ISPs) to offer applications for home intelligence to their customers (home owners and businesses).
Applications built in compliance with the USP standard could range from lighting and home security to sensor management, using an ISP’s router as the gateway to such solutions. Greenwave claims it is the first technology company to provide a USP-based solution. The firm also helped to develop the standard with the Broadband Forum, based on its own solutions, says Tim Spets, Greenwave Systems’ senior IoT systems and standards architect. The goal, he explains, is to extend communication beyond simply the router, to a network of sensors or devices that can communicate wirelessly within a home or other building.

The USP protocol comes more than a decade following the release of an open standard known as TR-069, which enables service providers to communicate with the internet routers they provide to customers for network access. TR-069 allows them to send software updates to routers, and to perform troubleshooting remotely—but that’s where their access to the router ends.

Greenwave built its AXON proprietary solution in 2015 so service providers can offer the software application to customers. The solution would allow users to connect the router to sensors or other Wi-Fi based devices via their smartphone or tablet, in order to accomplish such functions as controlling lights using the AXON app. “We have the architecture built that can accomplish this,” Spets says. However, he notes, as an open protocol, TR-069 does not provide that level of access to applications for multiple end points, such as sensors, smartphones or other devices, via a router.

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