Connectivity Framework
3 : Connectivity Reference Architecture
A core connectivity standard shall have commitments from SDOs to build standards-based core gateways to the other core connectivity standards . This ensures syntactic interoperability between the core connectivity standards .
A core connectivity standard should support all the core functions of a connectivity framework . It should be fast , flexible , and impose minimal overhead . It should be a proven , well-established technology , and be open and extensible to future needs of the most demanding IIoT systems .
Specifically , it should meet the following technical criteria :
• the connectivity framework functional requirements described in section 4.1 , within each functional domain and across functional domains ,
• the non-functional requirements of performance , scalability , reliability , resilience , within and across functional domains ,
• security and safety requirements within and across functional domains ,
and the following business criteria :
• not require any single component from any single vendor ( consistent with the internet model ) and
• have readily-available , professionally-supported Software Development Kits ( SDKs ) from multiple vendors , ideally including both commercial and open source .
The technical and business criteria ensure that an endpoint can use a gateway to any core connectivity standard to communicate with other endpoints connected via a gateway to another core connectivity standard .
The design of specifying only a few core standards with core gateways amongst them mitigates the “ N-squared ” problem ( see section 3.1 , Figure 3-1 ). The core connectivity standards bear the burden of mapping to all other core connectivity standards . Core connectivity standards allow all other domain-specific connectivity technologies ( standard or non-standard ) prevalent within a domain to continue to be used , while providing a pathway for an open architecture to communicate with the larger IIoT ecosystem . Domain-specific connectivity technologies will need a gateway to one of the core connectivity standards . Those gateways can be products , hardware or software , standard or not . There is a practical need to limit the number of core standards to just a few , and judiciously allow for new ones to be added , if there is clearly no significant overlap with existing core standards . Otherwise we would be back again to an N ² problem ( see section 3.1 , Figure 3-1 ) amongst the connectivity core standards .
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