Platform FAQ

docs/platform/faq.md

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+---
+title: FAQ
+---
+
+# FAQ - Lobaro Platform
+
+## Why is the Lobaro Platform mandatory for our NB-IoT Sensors & Gateways?
+
+This question sometimes arises from integrators who run their own type of IoT platform tailored to a particular use-case
+and don't want an intermediate between their system and the IoT hardware to integrate. In contrast to this our platform
+is primary considered as a head end system for device management of Lobaro and 3rd party sensors and gateways. It's
+meant as secure, stable
+and scalable abstraction layer to the actual hardware complexity and gives the following benefits to the integrator or
+end-user:
+
+* **Encrypted data transfers using UDP and NB-IoT**, client and server certificate-based, using DTLS, while still being
+  able to use battery life friendly UDP transfers with little overhead.
+* Administration of client and server certificates.
+* **Remote configuration** of sensors via simple APIs (Web UI, REST).
+* Support for **Firmware Updates** Over The Air (FOTA).
+* **Scalability**, even with thousands of devices.
+* **Intermediate storage** for sensor data before further processing in the downstream application.
+* **Data insight and export** independent of downstream application via CSV export or REST API.
+* **Integration with LoRaWAN Network Servers** like ChirpStack, TTN / TTI, Lotiot, and many more ...
+* **Unified API for downstream applications** across different connectivity technologies on the device side (e.g.
+  NB-IoT,
+  LoRaWAN, wireless MBUS, LAN).
+* Quickly bring IoT applications to market by focusing on the use case and the actual data without having to deal with
+  hardware and firmware implementation details or properly secured data transfers from the sensor to the cloud.
+* **Low hardware requirements** for the server of the Lobaro Platform. Small setups can run on the same server next to
+  the
+  use-case specific platform or even an Raspberry PI for embedded use-cases. Bigger setups can be auto scaled in cloud
+  environments.
+* Internal APIs between hardware and Lobaro Platform can be changed, e.g. for firmware extensions, without compromising
+  a **stable API to the downstream system** and thus increasing the stability of the end application.
+
+As one might see, all these functionality require a high level of knowledge about the hardware and how it internally
+works. **Lobaro can only provide support and guarantees that all features of our NB-IoT products are available and
+function as expected if the Lobaro Platform is also used as a counterpart.**
+
+If using the Lobaro IoT platform is absolutely not an option many of our NB-IoT products can also be configured to use
+LoRaWAN uplinks which shifts the dependence to the used LoRaWAN network server beside the well-known challenges of
+LoRaWAN networks compared to cellular IoT. We also work on Direct MQTT support for some of our devices to allow direct
+integrations with a custom broker.