Managing Internet protocol routing for Low Power Lossy Networks

Protocols such as 6LoWPAN will soon directly connect the Internet to the rapidly growing number of deployed Low Power and Lossy Networks (L2Ns). The outcome will enable many novel applications, including new types of Cyber-Physical Systems, the “Internet-of-Thing”, the Smart Grid, etc. Due to resource constraints the performance of a L2N routing protocol is quite sensitive to changes in protocol parameters such as route maintenance and packet retransmission timers. However, the lack of network management tools makes it quite difficult to efficiently set these parameters or even to effectively compare different protocols across multiple metrics of reliability, energy consumption, throughput and delay. Our paper addresses this issue. We discuss the most important parameters that must be managed within an Internet-friendly L2N. We propose a novel management heuristic called ROLL-POWER, designed to simplify the monitoring of L2N performance, independent of the routing protocol type. Through extensive simulation we evaluate our claims about the importance of correct parameter setting and the efficiency of the ROLL-POWER metric. Our results show that this simple metric can be used by a network manager both to tune protocol parameters for L2Ns and as a simple and direct method of comparing different protocols.