One of the more obvious use cases is remote control of devices – say you want to turn the heating on remotely, then at some point it's going to have to communicate outside the network. Or if you have a remotely-accessible camera. Or an alarm system that notifies you when it goes off. Or a locking system, and so on.
I'm not arguing that this is a good thing, but it does explain why the devices want remote access. In an ideal world, this would function through some kind of home hub device – a single point of communication between "outside" and "inside", which has many clear benefits. In practice, it's going to be difficult to do this; devices don't use any kind of shared protocol or system that would enable this.
I am currently working on an 'IoT' project, and it also connects to a central server, directly, over wifi, for exactly these reasons. It's hard to see what other approaches are possible at this stage, until there is some kind of industry-wide standard that's actually used by manufacturers.
> In an ideal world, this would function through some kind of home hub device – a single point of communication between "outside" and "inside", which has many clear benefits
This is exactly what I was suggesting, and thanks for your input!
I believe this is a space where Raspberry Pi has some potential - as there are some open sourced projects that handle some of these functions.
Personal anecdote: I recently bought a PiNoIR module and plan on building a (relatively primitive) apartment security system in which the machine the camera-pi "phones home" to can send my phone Twilio SMS if any motion is detected.
Problems I foresee is if the home computer is pwned, both devices can be exploited for the same nefarious task.
:EDIT: Granted, most consumers don't want to "DIY" as much as I do.
I'm not arguing that this is a good thing, but it does explain why the devices want remote access. In an ideal world, this would function through some kind of home hub device – a single point of communication between "outside" and "inside", which has many clear benefits. In practice, it's going to be difficult to do this; devices don't use any kind of shared protocol or system that would enable this.
I am currently working on an 'IoT' project, and it also connects to a central server, directly, over wifi, for exactly these reasons. It's hard to see what other approaches are possible at this stage, until there is some kind of industry-wide standard that's actually used by manufacturers.