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Extending the Internet of Things to the future Internet through IPv6 support
Jara A., Varakliotis S., Skarmeta A., Kirstein P. Mobile Information Systems10 (1):3-17,2014.Type:Article
Date Reviewed: Feb 9 2015

This thought-provoking paper describes both practical experiments with a multi-protocol communications card and novel analytical mappings of Internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) addressing and dedicated link addressing such as KNX and IEEE 802.15.4. If at times the text makes for a difficult read (ideas don’t follow), the main ideas of using IPv6 in the Internet of Things still transpire throughout.

A strong case is made about the introduction of the use of IPv6 (addressing, mostly) into legacy systems dedicated to professional use, such as building automation. These systems often use addressing spaces extremely differently than IPv6 addressing, hence the need for mapping schemes. A number of novel mapping mechanisms are alluded to, but unfortunately full descriptions are not provided.

Other than address mapping, the context is described as that of protocols that would be affected by these developments: IPv6 over low-power wireless personal area networks (6LoWPAN) adaptation layers for header compression, border routers, gateways, proxies, and constrained IP stack implementations. In this context, the protocol proposes GLoWBAL IPv6 as a new and more efficient addressing mechanism, and translation (a comparison table is featured). In addition, the existing concept of two-step networking at the edge (to gate from/to a sensor network to an IP network) is extended to three-step networking involving new half-gateways separating an IPv6 sensor network from a IPv6 local network, which is further bordering an IPv6 wide-area network.

Indeed, the software implementation concepts appear to be worth considering in detail (half-gateways). Also, the expression of a need for mapping to very different addressing schemes such as electronic product codes (EPCs), a scheme devoid from an associated routing scheme, is of high value since (1) it poses a relatively hard challenge (How can we run IPv6 routing on something devoid of routing?) and (2) it may prove to be an efficient tool for IPv6 implementers in need of unique identifiers (they often find themselves inventing random numbers when a unique tag is actually present in the immediate vicinity).

A knowledgeable reader may find this paper lacking information on the existence of numerous “IPv6-over-foo” standard documents (for example, RFC4944 “IPv6 over 802.15.4”), which do provide mapping schemes. These mapping schemes are precisely dedicated to answering the questions of how to address “things” with IPv6.

Reviewer:  Alexandru Petrescu Review #: CR143166 (1505-0401)
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