Progressive Adoption of RINA in IoT Networks: Enhancing Scalability and Network Management via SDN Integration

Abstract

Thousands of devices are connected to the Internet as part of the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems. The next generation of IoT networks is expected to support this growing number of Intelligent IoT devices and tactile Internet solutions to provide real-time applications. In view of this, IoT networks require innovative network architectures that offer scalability, security, and adaptability. The Recursive InterNetwork Architecture (RINA) is a clean slate network architecture that provides a scalable, secure, and flexible framework for interconnecting computers. SDN technology is becoming a de facto solution to overcome network requirements, making RINA adoption difficult. This paper presents an architecture for integrating RINA with SDN technologies to lower the barriers of adopting RINA in IoT environments. The architecture relies on a RINA-based distributed application facility (DAF), a RINA southbound driver (SBI), and the RINA L2VPN. The RINA-based DAF manages RINA nodes along the edge–fog–cloud continuum. The SBI driver SDN enables the hybrid centralized management of SDN switches and RINA nodes. Meanwhile, the RINA L2VPN allows seamless communication between edge nodes and the cloud to facilitate the data exchange between network functions (NFs). Such integration has enabled a progressive deployment of RINA in current IoT networks without affecting their operations and performance.