The rate of growth of Internet of things (IOT) devices may be very different from that of traditional IT gear; organisations may therefore find they are consuming IP addresses much more quickly than before.
So says Cricket Liu, chief infrastructure officer at Infoblox, commenting on the findings of the recent ITWeb/Infoblox Internet of Things Survey, which ran online for 14 days in July 2014.
"It is very important for organisations to monitor how many IOT IP addresses they have in use because those addresses are usually allocated out of the same stockpile of addresses that serve all their other networked gear. If they were to run out, they'd be unable to add anything new to their network."
According to a recent report by Gartner, "the installed base of 'things', excluding PCs, tablets and smartphones, will grow to 26 billion units in 2020, which is almost a 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion units in 2009".
"The survey was commissioned to investigate the effect that the growth of Internet of things will have on enterprise networks and their administrators," he says.
According to the survey, the highest scoring IOT deployments for the respondents is office equipment (74.68%); office security came in second at 48.10%. When asked how organisations can best prepare for more devices inevitably becoming connected to their network, Liu advises organisations to implement infrastructure, such as dedicated networks or management systems specifically to support their IOT deployments.
The survey asked how many IOT IP addresses organisations have: 24% of survey respondents cited up to a 100, while 17% said 101 to 1 000.
It also emerged from the survey that a large amount of respondents (68%) chose cost efficiencies and operational efficiencies as factors driving their uptake/increase in the use of IOT, the second-highest choice at 48% is an opportunity to create new revenue streams.
The results of the IOT survey were evenly split when respondents were asked if their organisation has any methods in place to recognise and quarantine "things" infected by malware, 27% answered yes, and that these methods are effective; 27% said yes but they could be improved; and 24% answered that they have nothing in place.
Liu believes the IOT represents a range of new and fascinating opportunities, many of which have not yet even been considered.
"Enterprise network teams have demonstrated a willingness to embrace the Internet of things and, with sufficient planning and greater cross-department communications, it will be possible to address a series of potential challenges and frustrations so that these opportunities can be unlocked."
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