New Talents in the Technical Community

13/05/2021

The LACNIC Technical Forum includes a space for new talents which is reserved for young women participating in the IT Women Mentoring program. This time, Uruguayan engineer María Jesús Cresci presented a study on Software Platforms and Protocols for Effective IoT Development in areas where there is no signal coverage of any kind.

Cresci’s work focused on IoT and the network protocols needed to connect devices in areas where there is no Internet coverage (for example, in rural areas) and where sensors need to be deployed to monitor property, livestock, environmental variables, and other applications. The study showed the feasibility of using different protocols for providing connectivity in remote regions based on each protocol’s individual strengths.

During her presentation, Cresci noted that the initial purpose of her research was to identify the most appropriate protocols and solutions for areas where sensors and monitoring devices are required but there is little or no signal coverage of any kind. The study involved determining the feasibility of using different protocols to offer connectivity in such areas based on their specific strengths. It also tried to determine which standard software platform functions and features would be appropriate for receiving the variables collected by these sensors.

As the study progressed, it also attempted to determine the viability of designing and implementing a software-defined network (SDN) in a legacy IoT network. 

In her research, Cresci suggests that the IoT network might support SDN technology and thus acquire all the benefits, advantages and functionalities this technology can provide, turning the legacy IoT network into an SD-IoT (software-defined IoT) network. She also suggests studying the design and implementation of a controller (central software) for planning, provisioning, monitoring, managing, and maintaining these networks.

This idea would be used for ISP implementations in last-mile networks, as the advantage of using an SDN is that it reduces maintenance costs in multi-device networks.

Other new talents who presented during the space for new participants were Vanessa de Oliveira Mello, who shared her work on Network Automation: Idempotency in the Configuration of an AS; Yisel Tamayo, who presented her Model for Availability Management and Control in the Automation of Technological Infrastructure Monitoring Processes; and Dalia Terán, who shared her research titled Analysis of IPv6 Information Network Security in a Virtualized Environment.