AT&T Extends NetBond Service To Offer Secure IoT Connections
The surge in internet usage is the thing that made IoT happen, offering a common protocol to take place of the separate and specialized networks. However, the public internet may not always be the best path between the cloud and a connected device. Businesses can now connect their mobile IoT devices to the back end systems, making use of the NetBond, which is a private network service that is offered by AT&T, instead of the internet.
NetBond sets up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) from a remote device to the cloud. The service is capable of connecting to sixteen different public clouds, which includes Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, or any other hybrid cloud. AT&T announced NetBond for IoT in an event that was meant to showcase the benefits of the software defined network of AT&T. About one-third of the infrastructure of AT&T is virtualized now and more than half will be virtualized by the end of the year, says AT&T.
AT&T has combined NetBond with their Control Center IoT services platform, which is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform that helps to manage connected devices. Control Center is based on the IoT provisioning and management technology that is offered by Jasper technologies, which was acquired by Cisco last year. AT&T said that about six hundred customers of AT&T are currently using Control Center.
NetBond service from AT&T shields IoT traffic from the common internet threats like the DDoS attacks and offers a portal to control things like latency and bandwidth on links that are made between the remote device and the cloud. NetBond is designed to make IoT connections meet the requirements of different applications in areas like healthcare, manufacturing and city infrastructure.
GlobalData analyst Peter Jarich says that the NetBond offering plays into the various concerns that many businesses have about the IoT. Surveys conducted by GlobalData proves that many of the enterprises hold back from using IoT due to the worries about security and some get even more concerned after using it. NetBond for IoT works well with devices that are on the AT&T network in the US and their partner carrier systems in countries other than US, as NetBond is available across the globe.