Figure 2 illustrates an IoT system 200 in one embodiment. The IoT system 200 comprises IoT devices 202 communicatively coupled via a wide area network 204 to a server system 206 via an optional proxy server 210. The network topology of the IoT system 200 is a hybrid hub-and-spoke. One or more of the IoT devices 202 acts as a gateway device 208 providing a communication channel to the server system 206. The IoT devices 102 that are not the gateway device 208 communicate directly with the gateway device 208, or via the proxy server 210, which communicates on their behalf and on its own behalf with the server system 206. The optional proxy server 210 may improve the performance of the IoT system 200 by mirroring some or all of the state of the server system 206 and thus enabling the IoT devices 202 to communicate without creating bandwidth or incurring the latency of the wide area network 204. The optional proxy server 210 is typically colocated at a facility or nearby facility to where the IoT devices 202 are located.