# Management Platforms and Protocols for Internet of Things: A Survey
## 1 Introduction  
Initially, computer networks were created for communicating as a mean of sharing endpoint devices with the same standards of networks, protocols, and operating systems. However, the fast evolution of networks combined with a reduction of computational resources costs motivated the increase of computer networks in all markets [1]. Considering this scenario, it becomes increasingly necessary to manage the network environment to keep it working properly. Network managementis required to maintain the entire network structure working, thus meeting the user needs and the administrators' expectations. Due to the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), it is expected an exponential growth of network endpoint devices (NEDs) becoming a challenge in the areas of infrastructure, security, energy saving, among others [2]. The continued growth in the number and diversity of network components has also contributed to the fact that network management activity has become increasingly indispensable [3]. The benefits of integrating a company's computing systems of different nature and sizes as a way of distributing tasks and sharing available resources are now a reality. For this reason, an efficient data management system is required by IoT networks, so the information is always available wherever and whenever requested [4]. IoT management presents two main scopes: devices and networks. In each of them, there is a huge variety of protocols and management platforms to minimize the challenges (presented later) [5]. Given the number of existing protocols and platforms, an evaluation should determine which IoT management protocols are capable of efficiently satisfying the application requirements and which platforms support these protocols for real environments (real deployment). Communication between devices performing machine-to-machine communication (M2M), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for monitoring and control processes, and the interconnection of WSNs with the Internet are examples of some challenges of managing an IoT network [6]. Network devices using software-based communication (known as software-defined networks--SDN) gathers, detects, and configures data from sensors, thus creating the context of managing a network. New technological approaches focusing on IoT are emerging, as Fog/Cloud technologies [7], and they are compatible with constrained portable devices and with old management protocols, therefore being an IoT trending topic. Figure 1 presents a typical scenario involving different communication technologies and a gateway where connected devices collect information from the environment (e.g., temperature, luminosity, movement, etc.) and report data to an IoT management network entity. One of the most important challenges in this IoT scenario is the network device heterogeneity [8; 9]. Devices can support different communication protocols with different formats and data types, memory and processing capacity [10]. Another important factor is the data set produced in real time and the implicit semantics imposing challenges regarding the configuration and infrastructure of IoT environments [11]. An illustration of the heterogeneity of protocols for IoT is shown in Figure 1.  
The complexity of IoT Network Management compared with traditional Transport Control Protocol (TCP)/IP networks management is also greater than WSNs [12]. IoT needs to support  
Figure 1: Illustration of an IoT Network Architecture and a plethora of available protocols. networking devices and services that involve (i) the use of a plethora of devices with diverse characteristics, and (ii) the IoT networks devices interaction through local or remote management context awareness. WSNs should manage frequent communications failures and low security of wireless links (i.e., the MANNA architecture [13]), and this management must also be context aware. The available IoT management architectures partially attend to these features [14].