Creating nested IoT field gateways with Azure and AWS

Question

From what I have read and understood from their documentation is that only single layer IoT hierarchies can be maintained with either of their gateways. That is a field gateway(sort of like a smart router) sits between the server and edge devices and does the preprocessing and edge computing.

What I am wondering is whether field gateways provided from either vendor(AWS or Azure) can be nested as parent and children to create multi-layered IoT device hierarchies. That is gateways connected to gateways and so on.

EDIT - This kind of hierarchies would create Fog networks which would enable sub-networks within the hierarchy to function more independently without being over-reliant on the server. Also, they'd reduce the load on the server if the edge gateway could do edge computing while reducing latency as well.

Normally, we [use the edge device as a gateway](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-edge/iot-edge-as-gateway) and connect to Azure IoT directly. Would you mind sharing the reason that you want to insert a gate between edge device and Azure IoT hub? — Fei Xue, Jul 20 '18 at 03:28
@FeiXue, I amended the question with the purpose of the implementation. — Nuwan Jayawardene, Jul 21 '18 at 04:34

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 27 '18 at 03:11

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Currently the edge device only able to communicate with Azure IoT Hub directly. It doesn't support nest multiple Azure IoT Edge gateways.

However, this capability is planning on adding to the product. This feature will be considered in the future but unfortunately there is no timeline yet.

answered Jul 27 '18 at 03:11

Fei Xue

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If this were to happen, will the nesting be made available for all 3 kinds of gateways (transparent, protocol, identity) or will there be a new type? – Nuwan Jayawardene Jul 28 '18 at 06:10
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@nuwanjaya Since this is a new feature in planing now, there is no such detail info can provide at present. I suggest that you keep follow the public document of [Azure IoT Edge](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/iot-edge/) to get the latest document. – Fei Xue Jul 30 '18 at 02:13
is it possible to verify how you are aware of this information? – Nuwan Jayawardene Oct 09 '18 at 14:33
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This was confirmed by our engineer internally. – Fei Xue Oct 10 '18 at 08:56
Do you happen to be employed at Micrsoft? – Nuwan Jayawardene Oct 17 '18 at 06:34

Creating nested IoT field gateways with Azure and AWS

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