The next wave of the Internet is widely predicted to be the move towards the Networked Appliance (NA); The Fridge that can keep an inventory of your groceries and re-order when necessary or perhaps the Alarm Clock that can co-ordinate your agenda, the weather and the road conditions to determine the correct time to wake you up. It is clear that these appliances will need to communicate amongst themselves so that, for example, the Alarm Clock can turn on the Bedroom Lamp, but the mechanism these appliances will use to communicate is far from obvious.

This work investigates the rationale behind the requirement for the standardization of these mechanisms and proposes extensions to the SIP architecture to meet these requirements. It further presents ways in which these new mechanisms are intended to be used. Networked Appliances (NAs) are dedicated function consumer devices containing at least one networked processor. Examples include lamps, coffee makers and alarm clocks. The figure below provides an example of a home domain containing Networked Appliances.

We believe that Networked Appliances need a mechanism to communicate from the wide area to the local area. Work in this area is being made public through the IETF. If you are interested in this information, you may want to:

• Read one of the articles that appeared in IEEE Communications Magazine:
  • A Protocol for Secure Wide-Area Networked Appliance Communication -- October 2001.
  • Service Portability of Networked Appliances -- January 2002.
• view a presentation on SIP for Networked Appliances (in PDF) that was given during the SIP Working Group at the Pittsburgh IETF.
• read the Requirements for Networked Appliances: Wide-Area Access, Control, and Interworking Internet Draft
•  read the revised (6/20/01) Framework Draft for Networked Appliances Using the Session Initiation Protocol Internet Draft (in text or PDF)
• read the SIP Extensions for Communicating with Networked Appliances Internet Draft
• read the Device Message Protocol (DMP): An XML based format for Wide Area Communication with Networked Appliances Internet Draft
• Check the answer to frequently asked questions
• Subscribe to the Networked Appliances discussion list, appliances@research.telcordia.com, by sending a mail to appliances-request@research.telcordia.com
• Consult the archives of the mailing list.
• View archived messages from the SIP mailing list that began the public discussion of SIP for networked appliances