This document discusses, among other things, a Cellular Internet-of-Things (CIoT) network architecture to enable communication between an apparatus of a CIoT User Equipment (UE) and a network through a CIoT enhanced Node B (eNB) according to a lightweight Non-Access Stratum (NAS) protocol. An apparatus of a CIoT eNB can process data for communication between the CIoT UE and the network. The lightweight NAS protocol supports a reduced set of NAS messages for communication between, for example, the CIoT UE and the CIoT eNB, such as using a modified NAS message, or one or more new messages.