Use gateways to offload and pre-process your data at the edge

The decision to connect a device directly to the cloud or via a gateway will depend on a variety of factors, including the specific requirements of the application and the characteristics of the sensor and network.   It may be more power-efficient to use a gateway to receive and preprocess data locally, reducing the need for higher power radios on the device, reducing long-haul communications traffic and extending battery life.

 

If the device generates a large amount of data, it may be more efficient to use a gateway to pre-process and filter the data before sending it to the cloud, reducing long-haul network traffic. In addition, if the long-haul network connection is unreliable, it may be more practical to use a gateway with AWS IoT Greengrass to buffer data and make sure that it is delivered reliably to the cloud.