Subject: [6lowpan] For comments: 6LoWPAN Mesh Routing Requirements

From: "Dominik Kaspar" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:46:40 +0900

Hi all,

A new Internet-Draft has just been submitted to emphasize the importance of 
mesh routing in LoWPANs. I believe that well thought-out mesh routing is a 
vital precondition for fully functional LoWPANs and should be discussed in 
more detail within the 6lowpan working group.

Comments are welcomed for the Internet-Draft titled:
"Design Goals and Requirements for 6LoWPAN Mesh Routing"

Abstract:
This document defines the problem statement, design goals, and requirements 
for mesh routing in low-power wireless personal area networks (LoWPANs).

A URL for this Internet-Draft is:
www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-dokaspar-6lowpan-routreq-00.txt

Best regards,
Dominik 

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From: "Ian Chakeres" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 09:00:11 -0800

Good to see some requirements for 6lowpan routing.

Personally, I'd like to know what can't be done with MANET protocols
and why. Hopefully, a future version will include this information. If
you have any comments please send them to me or the MANET list.

Ian

I have some quick comments about the document.

I don't think LQI by itself should be used. LQI must be matched with
other indicators to make good decisions. LQI can be bad for routing.
Similarly, shortest path can be bad.

I think that operating with low routing state should be an
additionally goal. For example, if devices have only 32 forwarding
entries available. This fact could probably be captured in one of the
existing sections.

Regarding the requirements section:

I think that R2 is a bad requirement. I would instead say that routing
should be efficient. Efficiency can be defined in many ways. There
might be 6lowpan networks where all devices are power so power usage
is not important. Alternatively there might be nodes that choose not
to participate even though they have energy. I think that requiring
minimal energy routing is too harsh and unrealistic.

R3. I would say that 6lowpan works below IP. Therefore,
interconnection is not seamless but below IP. Some device will need to
bridge (PAN coordinator or gateway) this gap. For example,  RFD edge
devices will likely not include this capability.

R4. I'm not sure that routing needs to be aware of sleeping nodes. We
could reverse the requirement and say that sleeping nodes must be
aware of routing. Or we could create a routing protocol that should
work independent of the sleep schedule. For example, flooding.

R5. How do we measure simplicity and robustness? How much simplicity
and robustness are required by the various 6lowpan players?

R6. How mobile? How dynamic?

R7. Are you referring to IPv6 ND or routing (L2 in this case)
neighbor(hood) discovery?

R9. What is the scalability requirement? How many nodes & at what density?

R10. Is L2 (WEP like) security enough?

Ian