Subject: [core] Experimental CoAP transport over GATT

From: Christian Amsüss <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2020 21:10:39 +0100

Hello CoRE,

I've sketched up some text[1] and a demo implementation[2] of an
experimental transport of CoAP over Bluetooth Low Energy GATT.

Its main use case is to allow applications that run in a smart phone's
web browser to get a transport into a local mesh network (be it 6LoWPAN
or Bluetooth IPSP aka 6lo-over-BLE) without the round-trip of going
WiFi-router-borderrouter or cellular-cloud-borderrouter.

It's not something that should ever be run between two devices that are
in full control over themselves -- that's what real networks are for.
But like CoAP-over-WebSockets, it allows a privilege-constrained
application (web app in both cases) to contact a CoAP server that goes
out of its way to cater for the captive application.

The text is an early draft, and I expect lots to change there, but hey
it works, and I'd like to explore where this can be used and who else
might be interested in it. It has been suggested to go for independent
submission as an experimental document with this, but either way I'd
appreciate feedback from this WG, especially on

* Do you have applications where you'd use something like this?

* Is the URI design in there something we want for non-IP-based CoAP
  transports?

* Might another place be more suitable to ask these questions?

Kind regards
Christian

[1]: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-amsuess-core-coap-over-gatt/
[2]: https://gitlab.com/chrysn/coap-gatt-demo

-- 
I shouldn't have written all those tank programs.
  -- Kevin Flynn