It’s difficult to tell the difference between Machine to Machine (M2M) and the Internet of Things (IoT). In reality, the misunderstanding that M2M and IoT are the same has been a recurring topic of discussion in the tech world.

But now, more than ever, as both technologies continue to advance at breakneck pace, this is more important than ever.

Remote device access is a function of both M2M and IoT. As a result, the two words are often misunderstood.

Although both are business communication solutions, they are two separate schools of thought. M2M and IoT both bind items, but they do so in different ways.

Before we get into the details of the discrepancies, let’s take a look at where the two technologies intersect.

Remote access

To be sure, M2M is the forerunner of the Internet of Things. M2M laid the groundwork for computer networking, which IoT has expanded upon, and on which IoT progress is taking place and being implemented.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a broader view of networking that is fuelled by advances in M2M applications.

M2M is, first and foremost, a business solution that links companies to their devices that are also linked.

M2M transforms company operations by allowing them to remotely track and control their devices or equipment.

The key M2M deliverable is to link a computer to the cloud so that businesses can remotely access and collect data from it.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a mass market technology that affects both customers and businesses.

Consumer IoT links people to their computers and, in turn, enables them to be controlled remotely.

Enterprise IoT, on the other hand, takes things a step further by making asset management and monitoring easier.

Enhancement of market results

The data-centricity of both technologies is a critical application. Data from these devices can be gleaned for feedback on performance, user experience, and maintenance thanks to the given connectivity.

Data from M2M systems, for example, is used to locate system failures and save money on maintenance by removing the need for constant manual upkeep.

Indeed, the integration that both M2M and IoT offer helps companies to gather analytics and other useful information that they can use to develop their processes.

M2M and IoT do, without a doubt, have certain similarities. Both provide remote access to machine data and share information between machines without the need for human interaction.

Nonetheless, the two are not interchangeable. This is where the Internet of Things and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) diverge.

Which is the more scalable option?

IoT is inherently more scalable than M2M due to its cloud-based architecture.

Additional hard-wired connections and M2M sim card installation are no longer needed thanks to cloud-based architecture.

Channels of communication and applications

When it comes to communication channels and applications, M2M typically uses point-to-point communications through modems to link hardware devices, machines, and sensors to wireless, proprietary, and wired networks.

IoT sensors, on the other hand, use IP networks protocols, which are commonly used for transmitting data traffic over the Internet.

Blockchain technology was created to render cryptocurrencies viable, yet it has quickly become an industry norm as a result of Bitcoin’s meteoric rise — but it isn’t restricted to acting as a framework for coin exchanges.

Indeed, the fundamental concepts of blockchain technology — decentralisation, confidentiality, durability, and accessibility — make it suitable for use in virtually any industry. Although many of them are still theoretical, a lot of progress has already been made in practise.

In this article, we’ll look at five different ways that blockchain technology is being used that may surprise those who only associate it with Bitcoin. Let’s get started!

To verify identity

In a time when so much information about us is readily available online, identity fraud is a major concern. We use personal information to secure sensitive accounts, then post that information on social media; we store important documents in the cloud, then protect them with the same weak passwords we use everywhere else.
Someone driven by greed (or spite) will gather all the information required to cause irreversible harm to the average internet user’s existence.

To cope with this pervasive lack of protection, significant acts that involve substantive identity authentication (such as changing a bank account or communicating with the government in any way) would typically ask to see some tangible documentation that can’t be replicated instantly and therefore is more meaningful — typically a current password, a credit/debit card, or even a birth certificate.

However, this method is inconvenient and causes a significant delay since proofs must be shipped, checked, and safely returned. This is why businesses are working to decentralise proof of identity using blockchain technology, ensuring that there is no single point of failure and that no malicious party can take unilateral action to compromise data.

Civic, a security firm, has developed a platform that uses biometric data to access multi-factor authentication via blockchain, allowing users to perform even the most secure actions without the need for complex logins or physical tokens.

To improve cloud storage

Without cloud storage, the current business world will fail to survive. We’ve grown accustomed to dragging and dropping files into cloud folders and accessing them from any browser, site, or location.

The issue is that, while cloud storage servers are usually large and have backup systems in place to prevent prolonged downtime, they are developed and operated by a single entity. Take down the SaaS business that runs a cloud storage service, and the service goes down with it.

Storj is a blockchain-based startup that aims to expand network cloud storage without relying on governing bodies. Users will pay flat rates for storing or uploading files, and they will be able to raise money by donating their storage space to the network as a repository.

CDNs can be used to cache data on multiple servers and speed up distribution in traditional cloud storage, but blockchain storage will take it to the next stage.

To clean up diamond trading

Gem trading has always been fraught with unethical practises, with the large sums of money involved (as well as the gap between the primary buyers and sellers) driving some unethical practises.

The diamond trade is the most heinous of a group of heinous crimes. Miners are abused and mistreated, specifications are exaggerated, counterfeits are sold wherever possible, and the whole process is opaque.

For all of these purposes, a blockchain ledger is just what the diamond industry needs. It would be much more difficult for traders to get away with illegal activity if every transaction was visible to everyone who cared to look.

It may be difficult to embed a blockchain framework so deeply in the industry that its use becomes implicitly obligatory, but it’s a worthy aim to follow. Everledger, a fintech company, is doing exactly that, offering a framework for monitoring diamond purchases and sales, with the aim of extending it as far as possible to cover an ever-increasing portion of the diamond trade.

The diamond trade will eventually seize control if it can only hit the tipping point that it becomes more financially sound to use Everledger’s blockchain rather than circumvent it. The diamond trade will eventually see real transparency if it can only hit the tipping point where it is more financially sound to use Everledger’s blockchain rather than avoid it.

To support green energy

The last two applications of blockchain we’ll look at are, in my opinion, more critical than the first three because they solve one of the major issues with blockchain use: the resource-intensive processing needed to perform proof-of-work calculations.

Solar power is an important cog in the wheel of renewable energy, but it has never yet reached mainstream status, for a variety of reasons. Solar panels are unsightly, costly to instal, take a long time to pay for themselves, and don’t produce power effectively or reliably. However, technology is improving, as are the methods for implementing it.

People with solar panels will use blockchain to sell the solar energy they don’t use. They can sell electricity when they don’t need it and buy it back when they do by linking their power metres to blockchain nodes.
There are no energy providers to deal with, and there are no complicated incentive rates to navigate all is decided by the group.Those systems may also use consensus algorithms to validate transactions instead of expensive proof-of-work calculations.

Look at how companies like Solar Bankers are attempting to make independent off-grid energy systems user-friendly and efficient enough to be feasible in today’s world to see how this work is being achieved.

To provide powerful processing

In the previous portion, I stated that the last two uses would address the proof-of-work requirements of current blockchain development technology. Although it is possible to completely avoid them, as we just saw, they can also be used in novel ways.

Golem, dubbed a global supercomputer, is devoid of any central processing, relying solely on blockchain mining for processing capacity. Since the proof-of-work calculations necessary to validate transactions can theoretically be anything, Golem lets customers rent that huge aggregated power as needed.

This is a fantastic solution to the mining problem. Companies or research agencies that need a lot of processing power to measure items like weather patterns or health models don’t have to invest in their own systems, because all of the processing power that would otherwise be lost can be turned into something useful.

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According to Statista, there will be 30 billion IoT devices on the planet by 2020, and 75 billion linked objects by 2025. All of these devices can generate massive quantities of data that must be processed rapidly and sustainably. Fog computing, like cloud computing, enters the picture to meet the rising demand for IoT solutions. Fog is much better in some thin environments. The goal of this article is to compare fog vs. cloud computing and to inform you about the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Cloud Computing

We’ve all heard of the word “cloud,” which refers to a network of various devices, computers, and servers linked through the Internet.

A computer device like this can be divided into two sections metaphorically:

Wireless connections enable these two layers to communicate directly with one another.

Cloud computing technology offers a variety of services that can be divided into three categories:

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) is a virtual data centre that provides data storage, computing power, and networking.

PaaS (Platform as a Service) is a development platform that includes tools and components for developing, testing, and deploying apps.

Ready-made applications customised to a variety of business needs is known as SaaS (Software as a Service).

Also see: What’s the Difference Between IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS?

When you link your business to the cloud, you gain access to the aforementioned resources from any place and on a variety of devices. As a result, the biggest advantage is accessibility.

Furthermore, you won’t have to worry about maintaining local servers or dealing with downtimes because the vendor will take care of it for you, saving you money.

Integrating the Internet of Things with the cloud is a cost-effective method of doing business.

Off-premise networks provide the scalability and versatility needed to handle and analyse data collected by connected devices, while specialised platforms (such as Azure IoT Suite, IBM Watson, AWS, and Google Cloud IoT) empower developers to build IoT apps without large upfront hardware and software investments.

Pros of Cloud for IoT

Since connected devices have limited storage space and processing power, cloud computing integration comes in handy:

Improved output — IoT sensors and data processing systems communicate more quickly.

Storage capacities — a large volume of data can be integrated, aggregated, and shared thanks to highly scalable and limitless storage space.

Processing power — on-demand virtual processing power is available from remote data centres.

Cost savings — licencing fees are less expensive than the cost of on-premise facilities and ongoing repairs.

Cons of Cloud for IoT

Unfortunately, nothing is perfect, and cloud technology, particularly for Internet of Things services, has some drawbacks.

High latency — it’s becoming more and more common. Because of the gap between client devices and data processing centres, IoT apps require extremely low latency, which the cloud cannot provide.

Downtime — it’s becoming more and more common. Because of the gap between client devices and data processing centres, IoT apps require extremely low latency, which the cloud cannot provide.

Security and privacy — the personal information is transmitted over globally linked networks alongside thousands of gigabytes of information from other users; it’s no wonder that the infrastructure is vulnerable to cyber attacks or data loss; the issue can be partly solved with the aid of hybrid or private clouds.

Fog Computing

Fog is a cloud computing extension that consists of several edge nodes that are directly connected to physical devices, according to the description.

As opposed to centralised data centres, such nodes are physically closer to devices, allowing them to have instant connections. Edge nodes’ high processing capacity enables them to process large amounts of data without sending it to distant servers.

Fog may also include cloudlets, which are small but efficient data centres located at the network’s edge. Their aim is to help resource-intensive IoT apps with low latency requirements.

Fog computing differs from cloud computing in that the cloud is a centralised system, while fog is a distributed decentralised infrastructure.

Fog computing is a form of computing that acts as a bridge between hardware and remote servers .It controls which data should be sent to the server and which should be processed locally .Fog serves as an intelligent portal that offloads cloud workloads, allowing for more efficient data storage, processing, and analysis.

Fog networking is not a different architecture, and it does not replace cloud computing; rather, it complements it by getting as close as possible to the source of information.

Pros of Fog Computing

The most significant effect of the new technologies is likely to be on the growth of IoT, embedded AI, and 5G solutions, as they demand agility and seamless connections like never before.

There are no latency issues because data is aggregated at various points rather than being sent all at once to a single location through a single channel.

Due to the many interconnected networks, a loss of communication is unlikely.

Since data is processed by a large number of nodes in a complex distributed system, there is a high level of protection.

Improved user experience — fast answers and no downtime keep users happy.

Low latency — since fog is geographically closer to users, it can react quickly.

Power-saving protocols, such as Bluetooth, Zigbee, and Z-Wave, are used by edge nodes.

The Drawbacks of Fog Computing

While there are no obvious drawbacks to the technology, there are a few flaws to be aware of:

Fog is an extra layer in the data processing and storage system, making it a more complex system.

Additional costs — businesses should purchase edge devices such as routers, hubs, and gateways.

Fog’s scalability is limited compared to the cloud.

The Differences Between Fog Computing and Cloud Computing

The definitions of cloud and fog are somewhat similar. On certain criteria, however, there is a distinction between cloud and fog computing. The following is a side-by-side analysis of fog computing and cloud computing.

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