Abstract:While the technical development and applications of the Internet of things (IoT) grow rapidly in recent years, the theoretical research of the IoT is still in the developing stage. The IoT is a typical information and communication system. It possesses not only the capabilities of storing and transferring information as with the existing Internet, but also the capabilities of automatic capturing and processing the information of things. The IoT information modeling is an effective method to analyze the characteristic capabilities of the IoT. In this paper, an information model of the IoT is described by unified modeling language according to the definition and characteristics of the IoT specified by International Telecommunication Union (ITU). The capabilities of things association, autonomic operation, and privacy protection are analyzed and validated based on the information model of the IoT. The conclusions of guiding the standardization of the IoT technology from the information model of the IoT are discussed, and the values of the IoT information model in resolving the issues of debated concepts or opinions of the IoT are analyzed.