Nexus: Proxy Service for the Web of Things

Abstract

The W3C Web of Things (WoT) architecture is a model for handling Things (i.e. devices) as Web pages. The WoT proxy is a central building block of the architecture. Its primary role is to translate the devices’ communication protocols to HTTP(S) so that they can connect to the application server (in the cloud). Nexus promotes this idea even further and proposes that the WoT proxy be converted into a Multi-Context Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for all device-specific operations that would otherwise be performed on the application server. The advantage is the decoupling of the Proxy and application server roles. WoT proxy becomes application-independent. Different applications can use Nexus as a single point of access to their network devices. Nexus can manage users, devices, and the environment of various applications according to their roles and access rights. Experimental results show that Nexus scales well and responds in real time under heavy workloads.