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Where Things Roam: Uncovering Cellular IoT/M2M Connectivity

Published: 27 October 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Support for "things" roaming internationally has become critical for Internet of Things (IoT) verticals, from connected cars to smart meters and wearables, and explains the commercial success of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) platforms. We analyze IoT verticals operating with connectivity via IoT SIMs, and present the first large-scale study of commercially deployed IoT SIMs for energy meters. We also present the first characterization of an operational M2M platform and the first analysis of the rather opaque associated ecosystem.
For operators, the exponential growth of IoT has meant increased stress on the infrastructure shared with traditional roaming traffic. Our analysis quantifies the adoption of roaming by M2M platforms and the impact they have on the underlying visited Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). To manage the impact of massive deployments of device operating with an IoT SIM, operators must be able to distinguish between the latter and traditional inbound roamers. We build a comprehensive dataset capturing the device population of a large European MNO over three weeks. With this, we propose and validate a classification approach that can allow operators to distinguish inbound roaming IoT devices.

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Support for ?things? roaming internationally has become critical for Internet of Things (IoT) verticals, from connected cars to smart meters, and explains the commercial success of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) platforms. We analyze IoT verticals connected via IoT SIMs, and present the first analysis of an operational M2M platform and the associated ecosystem. For operators, the exponential growth of IoT has meant increased stress on the infrastructure shared with traditional roaming traffic. Our analysis quantifies the adoption of roaming by M2M platforms and the impact they have on the underlying visited Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). To manage the impact of massive deployments of roaming IoT devices, operators must be able to distinguish between the latter and traditional inbound roamers. We build a comprehensive dataset capturing the device population of a large European MNO for 22 days. With this, we propose and validate a classification approach that can allow operators to distinguish roaming devices.

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cover image ACM Conferences
IMC '20: Proceedings of the ACM Internet Measurement Conference
October 2020
751 pages
ISBN:9781450381383
DOI:10.1145/3419394
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 27 October 2020

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Author Tags

  1. Cellular M2M services
  2. IoT Roaming
  3. Traffic analysis

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  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

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  • H2020 Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Actions

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IMC '20
IMC '20: ACM Internet Measurement Conference
October 27 - 29, 2020
Virtual Event, USA

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IMC '20 Paper Acceptance Rate 53 of 216 submissions, 25%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 277 of 1,083 submissions, 26%

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  • (2024)Through the Telco Lens: A Countrywide Empirical Study of Cellular HandoversProceedings of the 2024 ACM on Internet Measurement Conference10.1145/3646547.3688452(51-67)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2024
  • (2024)Untangling IoT Global Connectivity: The Importance of Mobile Signaling TrafficIEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management10.1109/TNSM.2024.341497521:4(4435-4449)Online publication date: Aug-2024
  • (2023)MVNOCoreSim: A Digital Twin for Virtualized IoT-Centric Mobile Core NetworksIEEE Internet of Things Journal10.1109/JIOT.2023.326325810:15(13974-13987)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2023
  • (2023)Spotlight on 5G: Performance, Device Evolution and Challenges from a Mobile Operator PerspectiveIEEE INFOCOM 2023 - IEEE Conference on Computer Communications10.1109/INFOCOM53939.2023.10229108(1-10)Online publication date: 17-May-2023
  • (2022)Global mobile network aggregatorsProceedings of the 20th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services10.1145/3498361.3538942(183-195)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2022
  • (2022)A Strategic Approach to Model the Machine-to-Machine Communication of Industrial IoT System for MQTT Protocol with a Case StudyProceedings of 3rd International Conference on Machine Learning, Advances in Computing, Renewable Energy and Communication10.1007/978-981-19-2828-4_52(581-593)Online publication date: 18-Sep-2022
  • (2021)Rising Cellular Multimedia IoTProceedings of the 12th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference10.1145/3458305.3478462(388-392)Online publication date: 24-Jun-2021
  • (2021)Insights from operating an IP exchange providerProceedings of the 2021 ACM SIGCOMM 2021 Conference10.1145/3452296.3472930(718-730)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2021

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