3 Engineering IoT Networks
137
Ethernet/Wi-Fi PHY
Ethernet/Wi-Fi MAC
IPv4, IPv6
TCP, UDP, ICMP
HTTP, POP3, RTP, ...
TCP/IP stack
IEEE 802.15.4 PHY
IEEE 802.15.4 MAC
IPv6 adapted to LR-WPAN
TCP (not optimized), UDP, ICMP
Application
6LoWPAN-based stack
1
2
3
4
5
Layer
Fig. 3.22 Example of 6LoWPAN-based protocol stack compared with the traditional TCP/IP
stack
Node
EDGE
Router
Internet
IPv6
IPv4 or IPv6
6 L o W P AN N e tw o r k
Fig. 3.23 Example merging IPv4, IPv6 and 6LoWPAN networks through the presence of the Edge
Router
6LoWPAN was originally though for IEEE 802.15.4, a solution for Bluetooth Low
Energy (BLE) was also defined in RFC 7668 [59].
Figure 3.22 shows an example of 6LoWPAN-based protocol stack compared with
the traditional TCP/IP Protocol stack. Most protocol stacks based on 6LoWPAN
only supports UDP at Transport Layer since 6LoWPAN provides header compression specifically for UDP even if it does not prohibit the use of TCP if needed. It
is worth noting that documents describing 6LoWPAN standard do not contain the
description of the other protocols involved in the depicted stack. The definition of
such protocols is outside the scope of 6LoWPAN.
The 6LoWPAN concept originated from the idea that the same protocol (i.e., IP
Protocol) should be applied to all actors of an IoT application, from the traditional
hosts and cloud servers even to the smallest low-power devices with limited
processing capabilities, thus avoiding complex protocol translations. This objective
can be achieved by using Edge Routers [60] mixing IPv4, IPv6, and 6LoWPAN as
shown in Fig. 3.23. The edge router has three objectives:
137
Ethernet/Wi-Fi PHY
Ethernet/Wi-Fi MAC
IPv4, IPv6
TCP, UDP, ICMP
HTTP, POP3, RTP, ...
TCP/IP stack
IEEE 802.15.4 PHY
IEEE 802.15.4 MAC
IPv6 adapted to LR-WPAN
TCP (not optimized), UDP, ICMP
Application
6LoWPAN-based stack
1
2
3
4
5
Layer
Fig. 3.22 Example of 6LoWPAN-based protocol stack compared with the traditional TCP/IP
stack
Node
EDGE
Router
Internet
IPv6
IPv4 or IPv6
6 L o W P AN N e tw o r k
Fig. 3.23 Example merging IPv4, IPv6 and 6LoWPAN networks through the presence of the Edge
Router
6LoWPAN was originally though for IEEE 802.15.4, a solution for Bluetooth Low
Energy (BLE) was also defined in RFC 7668 [59].
Figure 3.22 shows an example of 6LoWPAN-based protocol stack compared with
the traditional TCP/IP Protocol stack. Most protocol stacks based on 6LoWPAN
only supports UDP at Transport Layer since 6LoWPAN provides header compression specifically for UDP even if it does not prohibit the use of TCP if needed. It
is worth noting that documents describing 6LoWPAN standard do not contain the
description of the other protocols involved in the depicted stack. The definition of
such protocols is outside the scope of 6LoWPAN.
The 6LoWPAN concept originated from the idea that the same protocol (i.e., IP
Protocol) should be applied to all actors of an IoT application, from the traditional
hosts and cloud servers even to the smallest low-power devices with limited
processing capabilities, thus avoiding complex protocol translations. This objective
can be achieved by using Edge Routers [60] mixing IPv4, IPv6, and 6LoWPAN as
shown in Fig. 3.23. The edge router has three objectives: