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Cisco Sensor Connect for IoT Services

Enterprise customers need easy ways to onboard, authorize, and control IoT devices onto a single unified infrastructure. The Cisco Sensor Connect addresses this by providing a set of interfaces to:

  • Onboard devices into the infrastructure.
  • Control and receive events from the devices.

To accomplish this, the Cisco Sensor Connect leverages the following interfaces between the network and applications:

  1. Onboarding Interface – This interface is used to onboard a device to a network.
  2. Control Interface – This interface is used for bi-directional communication with a non-IP device.
  3. Telemetry Interface - This interface is used for streaming telemetry from a non-IP device.

Introduction to Cisco Sensor Connect APIs

The IoT Orchestrator exposes APIs that allow applications to introduce devices to enterprise networks, control them, and receive telemetry from those devices.

NOTE: Device control and data reception are not required for IP-based end points because the devices can speak directly using their IP address.

Figure 1: Cisco Sensor Connect APIs Cisco Sensor Connect APIs

The IoT Orchestrator exposes the following APIs:

  • Provisioning Interface – The provisioning interface leverages the IETF System for Cross-Domain Identity Management (SCIM version 2) API, specifically the SCIM for devices model. For information on the Device Schema Extensions to the SCIM model, see https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-scim-device-model/.

    NOTE: The SCIM has a hierarchical schema with a core device schema and extensions. The SCIM allows an application to send a SCIM object to a SCIM server (gateway) to create, update, and delete devices in networks. For information on the System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) API, see RFC7643 and RFC7644.

  • Control Interface - The control interface allows an application to connect to a non-IP device, exchange data with the device, and register topics for streaming telemetry. The IETF draft for this protocol is called the Non-IP Control (NIPC).

  • Telemetry Interface – The telemetry interface is a streaming data interface with publisher sub-topics of different types, such as device broadcasts, device streaming data, or device connection state.

API Security

The API security is either API key or certificate-based authentication configured in the Gateway.

Deploy Sensor Connect for IoT Services

Use the Cisco Sensor Connect for IoT Services Configuration Guide to deploy Cisco Sensor Connect for IoT Services.

Authorization

API Key

An Authorization header must be added to every API request with the following format:

Code Snippet

header 'x-api-key: API_Key’

Sample:

header 'x-api-key: 596f0eba1668e6afeb3b25669990b7d84b8bf70408f21465a05e227664763024'