Experts fear RFID strain on networks

Network equipment vendors and industry watchers are sounding the alarm that RFID threatens to overwhelm enterprise networks with operational demands.

Addressing the issue are big-name companies such as Cisco and start-ups such as Reva Systems, which later this summer plans to unveil a network appliance designed to provision large-scale RFID networks and integrate them with back-end management and security resources and enterprise applications.

The problem is not the volume of traffic that RFID networks create. Rather, it is the sheer number of tags and tag readers that are anticipated. The current RFID approach can’t scale to handle those numbers.

“Without an architecture for RFID, large-scale deployments are not possible,” says David Passmore, research director for Burton Group. “At the reader level, in dense deployments you have to worry about RF interference, channel assignments and all that RF stuff. Most people don’t have the tools and training to do that on their own.”

Cisco’s biggest enterprise customers are emphatic about their infrastructure requirements for RFID, says Mohsen Moazami, vice president of Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group.

“They all say, ‘If I’m going to install 10,000 RFID readers on my network, you have to ensure they are good citizens on the network,'” he says.

RFID pilots typically involve some tens of readers, installed in a few sites, scanning tags on a limited number of items. The readers radiate a signal, usually in the 900-MHz band, which activates a tag, causing it to reflect some of that received energy back, along with the unique ID number embedded in the tag’s tiny processor. That number is passed back to a local server, running RFID middleware and applications to aggregate and manage the data.

Nearly all of these deployments use proprietary protocols between the tags and the readers, and the readers and the server-based software. Equipment supporting EPCglobal‘s Generation 2 air interface protocol, and the IETF’s proposed Simple Lightweight RFID Reader Protocol, is just now being certified.

Dave Husak, Reva’s CTO, has a nightmare vision of the next phase of RFID. Imagine, he says, a Fortune 100 applications architect or CIO walking up to the network IT manager’s desk and saying “I’ve just bought 500,000 RFID readers. I’d like them installed and operating.”

“I can guarantee you that guy [the network IT manager] has not been at the table during the RFID discussions,” Husak says.

What’s needed, he says, is a layered architecture for RFID, embodied in an appliance-like controller that dovetails with the current enterprise network. Looking downstream to the readers, the controller coordinates the activities, monitors and manages the radio frequency environment, authenticates readers, and consolidates RFID data. Looking upstream, toward the enterprise network, the controller interfaces with services such as DHCP, presents data to higher level applications and databases, and links with enterprise security and management capabilities.

The layering means application developers will be able to write RFID applications without taking into account underlying details about protocols, readers or tags. Today, if a reader breaks and is replaced, a developer has to rewrite part of the RFID application, says Ashley Stephenson, Reva CEO.

Reva and Cisco agree on the benefits of moving RFID functions into the network hardware. Cisco’s Moazami ritually cited company policy about not commenting on unannounced products, but did say, “generically speaking, our approach is adding more functionality to our boxes.” Currently, Cisco is working with a wide range of RFID tag, reader, and middleware vendors, as well as major systems integrators to provision RFID pilots that can be scaled eventually into large deployments, he says.

Those cooperative efforts are addressing a range of enterprise concerns, including security and authentication. It’s likely those efforts will result in new Cisco software, and better integration of these various products. For example, how do you prevent someone with a handheld reader from walking in and scanning your tags for data? Remote management and upgrades for RFID readers is another pressing enterprise concern, Moazami says. Location services that can pinpoint a broken RFID reader will be essential in large-scale networks, he adds.

“So far, the market has been so focused on the reader and tag integration, that it hasn’t paid much attention to what happens after these readers connect to the ‘cloud [the enterprise network],” Moazami says. “That will be a key determinant of successful RFID deployments.”