Many Internet of Things (IoT) devices do not have a user interface device (“UID”) such as a display and touchscreen, which makes a simple to use, yet thorough, IoT network discovery scheme important.
IoT devices often default to DHCP to ensure that a valid private subnet IP address is assigned that does not conflict with any other devices on the network. Without a UID, the user needs a method to find the newly installed IoT subnet address.
Linux based IoT devices have available useful network discovery tools such as ifconfig and nmap that can be used to find a large amount of network information.
If the IoT device is installed in a subnet that has Wide Area Network (“WAN”) access to the public Internet, the IoT device can auto-register its private subnet IP address, MAC address, manufacturer name, model number, and other information, with a web server on the public Internet. Depending on the type of IoT device, this information may need to be secure.
If the IoT is installed in a subnet that does not have access to the public Internet, a user on the same private subnet can run a HTML file locally (e.g. file://path/findIoT.html) that contains JavaScript that can search the private subnet for all IoT devices that respond to a URL established for this purpose.
For example, if the newly installed IoT device is at 192.168.10.77, the findIoT.html JavaScript browser program can scan all private subnet addresses in the range 192.168.10.77/24 (i.e. from 192.168.10.0 to 192.168.10.255) to find the IoT server web page (e.g. https://192.168.10.77/foundIoT.html?key=xxx) that responds with its JSON encoded private subnet IP address, MAC address, manufacturer name, model number, and other information. The scan will also find all other IoT devices that adhere to this same scheme. This scheme utilizes webRTC STUN and Session Description Protocol (SDP) to find the private subnet IP address of the browser in addition to cross origin XHR and operates in the Chrome and Firefox browsers.
It is also possible to scan all private subnets for https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/foundIoT.html?key=xxx that are accessible to the newly installed IoT device since private subnet IP addresses are contained within defined ranges (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_network). This type of deep scan takes more time.
It is also possible to use automatic UDP multicasting in AD-HOC network address ranges for newly installed IoT devices to announce their location and information.
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