WG Action: Routing Over Low power and Lossy networks (roll)

[IESG Secretary <[e-mail]>]

A new IETF working group has been formed in the Routing Area.  For 
additional information, please contact the Area Directors or the WG
Chairs.

Routing Over Low power and Lossy networks (roll)
==================================================

Last Modified: 2008-1-27

Current Status: Active Working Group

Chair(s):

JP Vasseur <[e-mail]> 
David Culler <[e-mail]>

Routing Area Director(s):

Ross Callon <[e-mail]> 
David Ward <[e-mail]> 

Area Advisor:
Ross Callon <[e-mail]>

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Description of Working Group
 
Low power and Lossy networks (LLNs) are typically composed of many 
embedded devices with limited power, memory, and processing resources 
interconnected by a variety of links, such as IEEE 802.15.4, Bluetooth, 
Low Power WiFi. LLNs are transitioning to an end-to-end IP-based solution
to avoid the problem of non-interoperable networks interconnected by 
protocol translation gateways and proxies. In addition, LLNs have specific
 
routing requirements that may not be met by existing routing protocols, 
such as OSPF, IS-IS, AODV and OLSR. For example path selection must be 
designed to take into consideration the specific power capabilities, 
attributes and functional characteristics of the links and nodes in the 
network.

There is a wide scope of application areas for LLNs, including industrial
 
monitoring, building automation (HVAC, lighting, access control, fire), 
connected home, healthcare, environmental monitoring, urban sensor
networks sensor networks, assets tracking, refrigeration. The Working
Group will only focus on routing solutions for a subset of these. It will
focus on industrial, connected home/building and urban sensor networks and
it will determine the routing requirements for these scenarios. 

The Working Group will provide an IPv6 only routing architectural
framework for these application scenarios. Given the transition of this
technology to  IP, at this time it is believed that an IPv4 solution is
not necessary. The  Framework will take into consideration various aspects
including high reliability  in the presence of time varying loss
characteristics and connectivity while permitting low-power operation with
very modest memory and CPU pressure in networks potentially comprising a
very large number (several thousands) of nodes. 

The Working Group will explore aspects of mobility within a single LLN
(if any) in the routing requirement creation.

The Working Group will pay particular attention to routing security and 
manageability (e.g., self configuration) issues. It will also need to
consider the transport characteristic the routing protocol messages will
experience. Mechanisms that protect an LLN from congestion collapse or
that establish some degree of fairness between concurrent communication
sessions are out of scope of the Working Group. It is expected that
applications utilizing LLNs define appropriate mechanisms.

Work Items:
 
- Produce routing requirements documents for Industrial, Connected 
Home, Building and urban sensor networks. Each document will describe the
use case and the associated routing protocol requirements. The documents
will progress in collaboration with the 6lowpan Working Group (INT area).


- Survey the applicability of existing protocols to LLNs. The aim of this
document will be to analyze the scaling and characteristics of existing 
protocols and identify whether or not they meet the routing requirements 
of the applications identified above. Existing IGPs, MANET, NEMO, DTN 
routing protocols will be part of evaluation.

- Specification of routing metrics used in path calculation. This
includes 
static and dynamic link/node attributes required for routing in LLNs.

- Provide an architectural framework for routing and path selection at
Layer 3 (Routing for LLN Architecture) that addresses such issues as
whether LLN routing protocols require a distributed and/or centralized
path computation models, whether additional hierarchy is necessary and how
it is applied. Manageability will be considered with each approach, along
with various trade-offs for maintaining low power operation, including the
presence of non-trivial loss and networks with a very large number of
nodes.

- Produce a routing security framework for routing in LLNs.
 
Goals And Milestones:

July 2008 Submit Routing requirements for Industrial applications to the
IESG to be considered as an Informational RFC.

July 2008 Submit Routing requirements for Connected Home networks
applications to the IESG to be considered as an Informational RFC.

July 2008 Submit Routing requirements for Building applications to the 
IESG to be considered as an Informational RFC.

July 2008 Submit Routing requirements for Urban networks applications to
the IESG to be considered as an Informational RFC.

November 2008: Submit Routing metrics for LLNs document to the IESG to be
considered as a Proposed Standard.

February 2009: Submit Protocol Survey to the IESG to be considered as an
Informational RFC.

April 2009: Submit Security Framework to the IESG to be considered as an
Informational RFC

May 2009: Submit the Routing for LLNs Architecture document to the IESG
as an Informational RFC.

June 2009: Recharter or close.
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