“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.“

This was the late Mark Weiser in his profoundly pathbreaking work “The Computer for the 21st Century” in 1991. He was describing how computers would one day be all-pervasive, omnipresent and so commonplace that we would hardly recognize their presence. Today in the second decade of the new millennium, what he called Ubiquitous Computing is slowly taking shape – albeit in the garb of what we now call the Internet of Things or IoT.

Today, we see a multitude of connected devices all around us. Mobile phones, laptops, desktops, wearable devices, Alexa and Google Home devices, and other smart devices in smart homes such as refrigerators, door alarms, automated HVAC systems, sensors in automatic driverless cars and offices, in manufacturing plants, on farmlands, trains, airplanes, satellites, and health care – all are increasingly getting connected to each other and forming a giant web.

This increased connectivity comes at a cost. Not all devices talk to each other in the same language or at the same time. IoT thus throws up the challenge of working in a multi-protocol, multi-domain, heterogeneous atmosphere. And since it is still in its early stages, the standards of communication are still being devised.