Cadfort: A Decentralized Internet of Things Platform Based on Kademlia

Abstract

Internet of Things is a fast-growing technology which is currently trending in modern industries. However, Internet of Things development is hindered by the lack of standardized development guidance and learning resources. Moreover, the use of centralized IoT solutions introduces a single point of failure as well as exposes private data to a third-party, and may leads to data and privacy breach. This research proposes a decentralized IoT platform based on Kademlia protocol. This platform aims to ease the development of simple Internet of Things system as well as solving centralized system potential threats, such as single point of failure and data breach. The main concept of the platform is to establish an overlay network in which every member (node) in the network is able to access certain data stream available in the network. Every time a node receives a data stream from a data source, it replicates the data stream to some other node based on Kademlia, so the data stream is accessible to most member of the network. The platform can also perform as a simple API server for data stream for a stand-alone deployment. The platform, named Cadfort, is successfully developed and is able to support simple IoT API development. The publish and subscribe functionality is also working to some degree, in which it is able to lookup certain data keys successfully in a network sized less than 1000 nodes. However, on a network sized 1000 node or more, the node sometimes fails to find certain data keys, in which the success rate is around 80% in a network with 3000 nodes. The result shows that the platform is effective for moderately sized clusters up to 1000 nodes.