Lightweight messaging for simulating service portability of networked appliances

The rapid development of network technology has introduced new ideas for interconnecting various types of appliances. For example, interconnecting home appliances such as the television, fridge, alarm, kettle and so forth. The main purpose of interconnecting appliances is to develop an environment where the appliances are able to share information that can help them to evaluate and produce a rational decision based on the current situation. This technology is known as networked appliances. Currently, every appliance provides specific or limited services. These services are not portable. We describe a simple approach for providing service portability of networked appliances. The feasibility of this approach will be demonstrated through a simulation of the appliance module by using a numbers of networked personal computers (PCs). The TCP/IP protocol is used as the communication protocol. However, a set of data is defined inside the TCP protocol, which is used to determine precisely the required action from the target appliance. This approach enables networked appliances' services to be available to any registered user at any registered public network. Furthermore, we present a review of some of the existing networked appliance architectures as well as a comparison between those architectures and the presented approach.