DNSNA: DNS name autoconfiguration for Internet of Things devices

Abstract

This paper proposes a DNS Name Autoconfiguration (called DNSNA) for not only the global DNS names, but also the local DNS names of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Since there exist so many devices in the IoT environments, it is inefficient to manually configure the Domain Name System (DNS) names of such IoT devices. By this scheme, the DNS names of IoT devices can be autoconfigured with the device's category and model in IPv6-based IoT environments. This DNS name lets user easily identify each IoT device for monitoring and remote-controlling in IoT environments. In the procedure to generate and register an IoT device's DNS name, the standard protocols of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) are used. Since the proposed scheme resolves an IoT device's DNS name into an IPv6 address in unicast through an authoritative DNS server, it generates less traffic than Multicast DNS (mDNS), which is a legacy DNS application for the DNS name service in IoT environments. Thus, the proposed scheme is more appropriate in global IoT networks than mDNS. This paper explains the design of the proposed scheme and its service scenario, such as smart road and smart home. The results of the simulation prove that our proposal outperforms the legacy scheme in terms of energy consumption.