What’s more, if the device in question is some simple thing like a thermometer, then there’s no reason for it to be networked at all. Just take the temperature and get on with your life!
Bah, there’s a LOT of devices that could talk to my father’s phone over the LAN if they were programmed that way. But, they aren’t. They report to a wall-known “cloud” server, and the app on his phone checks that same server for the latest status or to relay command/control.
Nice advantage: can get status / send commands even when he is not on the LAN. Bad disadvantage: when the rural Internet blinks out (like every time it rains) he can’t tell the robo-vac which rooms to start cleaning.
There is a reason military computers are often air-gapped. That is to say they have no connectivity whatsoever and need information brought to them, and they used floppy disks until recently. Not because people refused to give up the 90s but because floppy disks are very difficult to hack, unlike USB keys which are much easier to do.
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And people think that your need a phone service to use GPS.
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What’s more, if the device in question is some simple thing like a thermometer, then there’s no reason for it to be networked at all. Just take the temperature and get on with your life!
Bah, there’s a LOT of devices that could talk to my father’s phone over the LAN if they were programmed that way. But, they aren’t. They report to a wall-known “cloud” server, and the app on his phone checks that same server for the latest status or to relay command/control.
Nice advantage: can get status / send commands even when he is not on the LAN. Bad disadvantage: when the rural Internet blinks out (like every time it rains) he can’t tell the robo-vac which rooms to start cleaning.
There is a reason military computers are often air-gapped. That is to say they have no connectivity whatsoever and need information brought to them, and they used floppy disks until recently. Not because people refused to give up the 90s but because floppy disks are very difficult to hack, unlike USB keys which are much easier to do.