Using DNS for global discovery of environmental services

Abstract

Embedded sensor devices are getting pervasive in our everyday lives. Due to the penetration of the Internet in the real world, sensor devices become globally addressable, while the Web of Things envisions Web presence to these devices and their services. Future abundance of Web-enabled sensors would imply the need for efficient techniques for globally discovering them. To solve this problem using the existing Internet infrastructure, we explore the exploitation of the Domain Name System (DNS) as a scalable, ubiquitous, real-time directory mechanism for embedded devices. We investigate some practical issues that could arise from such an attempt and we discuss the potential of this approach.