Subject: [apps-discuss] Device Classification

From: Bruce Nordman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 11:16:28 -0700

Greetings all--

  I am new to the apps area, with my involvement in IETF to date
focused on energy management.
  I recently posted:
     https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-nordman-classification/
the goal of which is to define a very basic enumeration for
classifying IP devices for generic purposes.  In my case, it is
for a system that vacuums up energy data for all devices in a
building to have a basic sense of what type of device it is
(e.g. router, computer, printer, refrigerator, ...).
I do believe that many applications would also find this useful,
particularly as physical-world objects seek to understand what
other devices are in their vicinity, whether or not they want to
directly interact with them.
  I am not seeking to do anything more complex than the above.
This is not intended to replace detailed classification and characteristics
schemes that exist or will be developed for narrow sets of devices -- this
is only for the case of covering all devices and includes no
characteristics.
  I would welcome collaborators on this.
  Thanks,

--Bruce

-- 
*Bruce Nordman*
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
eetd.lbl.gov/ea/nordman
[email-masked]
510-486-7089
m: 510-501-7943

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From: Peter Saint-Andre <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:49:44 -0600

> is only for the case of covering all devices and includes no

Hi Bruce,

Could you describe a bit more the relationship between this work and
things like vCard, calendaring, LDAP, and perhaps other initiatives that
folks on this list might be familiar with? I think that would help
people here gain a better grasp of your goals.

Thanks!

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
https://stpeter.im/

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From: Bob Wyman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:58:44 -0400

Consider using a mechanism like that defined for .well-known/host-meta URLs
as defined in http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hammer-hostmeta-17
Assuming that each device had a tiny http server embedded in it, then I
could query a device like so:

GET /.well-known/host-meta HTTP/1.1
Host: device-url.com

And, I would get back a response containing something like the following,
which would include a classification value as well as links to just about
any other URLs that might be interesting.

  <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
  <XRD xmlns='http://docs.oasis-open.org/ns/xri/xrd-1.0'>
    <Subject>http://device-url.com/xy</Subject>
    <Property type='http://spec.example.net/ipclassification'>ip-router</Property>

    <Property type='http://spec.example.net/model'>IPR 2000</Property>

<Link rel='administrator'
href='http://example.com/john' /> <Link rel='energy-consumption' href='
http://device-url.com/energy-consumption' />

    <Link rel='manufacturer-site'
     href='http://big-vendor.com/' />

</XRD>

The nice thing about an approach such as that described above is that it is
easily extensible to cover whatever needs might appear in the future. it
would also be compatible with many of the systems that other folk are
building, such as
WebFinger<http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-jones-appsawg-webfinger-00.txt>,
that deal with discovering information about people, accounts, etc.

bob wyman

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Bruce Nordman <[email-masked]> wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> apps-discuss mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/apps-discuss
>
>

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From: Bruce Nordman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:32:08 -0700

The mechanism proposed below seems like a fine choice - the only part
of this I am attempting to address is the content of the classification
field ("ip-router" in the example).

I propose a numerical index, much like the registry of port numbers, or
even ASCII.  I would expect a list of 100-150 device types - not 10 and not
thousands.
This index would be used with many mechanisms.

For extending a service like Webfinger to devices, this would define
one of the fields that would be returned.

Thanks,

--Bruce

On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Bob Wyman <[email-masked]> wrote:

> building, such as WebFinger<http://www.ietf.org/id/draft-jones-appsawg-webfinger-00.txt>,