RE-NetBoot: Resource-Efficient Network Boot for IoT Platform

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) platform consists of numerous IoT devices and a small number of
servers. In order for the platform to operate efficiently and reliably, servers need to have complete
control over many IoT devices. The advantage of using network boot in this environment is that
the server has control over the device’s boot process. When applying network boot on an IoT platform,
the server needs to be able to handle the network boot that many IoT devices request. If the
server does not have enough processing power for the network boot request, IoT device boot would
be delayed. In this paper, we propose a resource-efficient network boot to solve this problem. The
proposed framework has three mechanism. First, the server reserves the right to control which system
image to transfer during the network boot process on the platform. Second, the server applies
deduplication to the system image to minimize the amount of data required for transmission. Third,
the server monitors network boot requests and performs file transfers appropriate to the situation,
minimizing time spent on transfers. The proposed system allows the server to efficiently control numerous
IoT devices when using network boot on the IoT platform.