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How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

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Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#101

Post by nicolsc »

slewis wrote: post #42
ju-st wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that 1kbps shared between all devices in range?

Great question. It depends on the technology. For example with LoRa, in the US there are 64 usable channels. In addition there are 5 available "spreading factors" per channel that are orthogonal to each other. A lower spreading factor device may communicate at twice the data rate of the one above it (but with worse range). So for example one device may communicate at 1kbps at SF12, another may communicate at SF11 at…

Sigfox doesn't have channels per se. Each Sigfox message is concentrated on ~100Hz, with the base stations listening to a 200KHz part of the available spectrum. Regarding interferors, the Ultra Narrow Band technology offers a great resistence: energy concentrated on a tiny width, plus the "random frequency" effect of the sigfox protocol.

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#102

Post by nicolsc »

blhack wrote: post #13

This is un. fucking. real. I work in the IoT space (specifically on health devices), and something like this would be absolutely a GOD SEND for the things that we're doing. The current "hottness" in our space is bluetooth low energy (BLE). This is super low power (or, rather: chips that are really good at going to deep sleep, and then coming online very quickly to burst some data out), but the range on BLE isn't grea…

If you're skeptical about LPWAN range claims .. better thing to do is to test :)

We (Sigfox) are running a hackathon in SF on Nov 20th, in partnership with the City. Good occasion to test the live network, and get your hands on a dev kit

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/smart-city-iot-hackathon-connec...

More info about Sigfox on http://makers.sigfox.com

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#103

Post by nicolsc »

slewis wrote: post #42
ju-st wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that 1kbps shared between all devices in range?

Great question. It depends on the technology. For example with LoRa, in the US there are 64 usable channels. In addition there are 5 available "spreading factors" per channel that are orthogonal to each other. A lower spreading factor device may communicate at twice the data rate of the one above it (but with worse range). So for example one device may communicate at 1kbps at SF12, another may communicate at SF11 at…

Forgot to add that Sigfox isn't based on TI radios, but is hardware-agnostic. Basically, most sub-GHz radio transceivers are compatible, and it's all about adding the soft stack. Current HW partners include TI, SiLabs, Atmel, Axsem, ..

We'll be using TI HW (Launchpad dev kit) on our SF event on Nov 20 (https://www.eventbrite.com/e/smart-city-iot-hackathon-connec...), but we're fully open on the hardware side.

Full list here : http://makers.sigfox.com/

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#104

Post by nicolsc »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #80

> So now you can buy a radio chip for a few bucks and add it to any device. Can someone tell me some names of those radio chips? I'm in Shenzhen, if they exist they should be available here. I want to buy some for a few bucks.

Sigfox-ready chips can be bought from Atmel, Axsem, SiLabs, TI, .. and more : http://makers.sigfox.com/

You should be able to get some Sigfox-enabled TI CC1120 for a few $ easily.

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#105

Post by blhack »

nicolsc wrote: post #102
blhack wrote: post #13

This is un. fucking. real. I work in the IoT space (specifically on health devices), and something like this would be absolutely a GOD SEND for the things that we're doing. The current "hottness" in our space is bluetooth low energy (BLE). This is super low power (or, rather: chips that are really good at going to deep sleep, and then coming online very quickly to burst some data out), but the range on BLE isn't grea…

If you're skeptical about LPWAN range claims .. better thing to do is to test :) We (Sigfox) are running a hackathon in SF on Nov 20th, in partnership with the City. Good occasion to test the live network, and get your hands on a dev kit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/smart-city-iot-hackathon-connec... More info about Sigfox on http://makers.sigfox.com

Oh man... Unfortunately I'm going to be out of the country during that or I would be ALL OVER IT.

Those dev kits are pricey... Is this the one? http://snootlab.com/shields-snootlab/829-.html

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#106

Post by nicolsc »

blhack wrote: post #105
nicolsc wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're skeptical about LPWAN range claims .. better thing to do is to test :) We (Sigfox) are running a hackathon in SF on Nov 20th, in partnership with the City. Good occasion to test the live network, and get your hands on a dev kit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/smart-city-iot-hackathon-connec... More info about Sigfox on http://makers.sigfox.com

Oh man... Unfortunately I'm going to be out of the country during that or I would be ALL OVER IT. Those dev kits are pricey... Is this the one? http://snootlab.com/shields-snootlab/829-.html

In the SF event we'll hand out TI dev kits, Launchpad + CC1120 boosterpack (~ http://www.ti.com/tool/boostxl-cc1120-90)

The Akeru board is still quite expensive (€100), as it's a full Arduino/Genuino board + sigfox module + subscription. And the guy is producing them himself, with small batches. This one is not FCC-ready yet anyway.

Keep in touch for future US-based events !

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#108

Post by StavrosK »

bdamm wrote: post #99
StavrosK wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my problem too, and I decided to develop a prototype protocol for it. I wrote a reference implementation in python, feedback very much desired: http://stringphone.readthedocs.org/

* The weaknesses you outline in the introduction are pretty serious. * How to exchange the topic key is described as out of scope, but totally critical since you also propose renewing the topic key as a way of attaining forward secrecy. * You totally hand-waved away the exchange of participant keys. * I'm pretty sure you've exposed some cryptographic weaknesses in the core protocol but I'm not going to spend the time…

> The weaknesses you outline in the introduction are pretty serious.

There's no weakness there that's not fixable. Replay protection can be easily added in the layer above, and rolling the topic key can also be done. The nonce problem can go away with using the wider Salsa variant.

> How to exchange the topic key is described as out of scope, but totally critical since you also propose renewing the topic key as a way of attaining forward secrecy.

Where did you see that? I go into a lot of detail here: https://stringphone.readthedocs.org/en/latest/protocol.html#...

> You totally hand-waved away the exchange of participant keys.

See the previous point.

> I'm pretty sure you've exposed some cryptographic weaknesses in the core protocol but I'm not going to spend the time to keep analyzing.

Hmm.

> Solutions will come in the form of standards adoption, hegemony, government regulation, and probably a combination of all three.

"Don't bother working on it" doesn't sound like very useful advice...

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#109

Post by bdamm »

StavrosK wrote: post #108
bdamm wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* The weaknesses you outline in the introduction are pretty serious. * How to exchange the topic key is described as out of scope, but totally critical since you also propose renewing the topic key as a way of attaining forward secrecy. * You totally hand-waved away the exchange of participant keys. * I'm pretty sure you've exposed some cryptographic weaknesses in the core protocol but I'm not going to spend the time…

> The weaknesses you outline in the introduction are pretty serious. There's no weakness there that's not fixable. Replay protection can be easily added in the layer above, and rolling the topic key can also be done. The nonce problem can go away with using the wider Salsa variant. > How to exchange the topic key is described as out of scope, but totally critical since you also propose renewing the topic key as a way…

Are you going after people or machines as your target? It matters which, because machines can't do human trust, so then the issue of how you exchange keys and establish trust is forced.

What's the stop a MITM between a client and any other client from intercepting the conversation? In your protocol, nothing, except that if the MITM isn't there at the start, they can't join in right away. This is not a very useful assurance. So please, keep working on it, but I think your challenges are pretty serious. If the problems are fixable, then go ahead and fix them. I'd be happy to take another look - after that.

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