You have started your analysis and found that your IoT data is not always complete. You also suspect it is not always accurate. But you have no idea why that would be the case. You get several hundred records a day on average from each device.

The IoT devices your company makes are attached to freight trailers and track location, and sometimes even temperature. The temperature is monitored when the trailer is a refrigerated unit, called a reefer in the industry. The inside temperature of a reefer must be kept in a certain range depending on what is being transported.

Your device is located on the outside of the trailer with a lead line into the trailer to read temperature if the option is enabled. The trailer is pulled around by big rig trucks over roads all over the country.

You have been so focused on finding value in the data, you never thought about how it was captured and communicated to your company's servers. Now that you are thinking about it, you wonder about the problems you see in the data. You had assumed it was occurring randomly, but if this is not the case. A little tingle of fear creeps down your spine. It would affect much of the analysis you have already done, the analysis that the company is using to make business decisions.

This chapter will provide an overview of the variety of IoT devices and networking protocols. We will also cover the business need they are trying to solve. By the end of the chapter, you will understand the what and the why of the major categories of devices and networking protocol strategies.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• The range of IoT devices along with some example use cases
• Common IoT networking protocols
• Common IoT data messaging protocols
• The advantages/disadvantages of different device and network protocol strategies
• How to analyze the data to infer protocol and device characteristics