ICMPv6SD: A Compact Service Discovery Protocol Supporting Plug-and-Play in Home Networks

UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) is popular in home networks because it provides a general service management schemes for heterogeneous hardware and software based on open standards. Meanwhile, the rise of the internet of things (IoT) results in the rapid growth of the number of small or embedded devices which makes the IPv4 address exhaustion even worse. Hence, IPv6 is widely adopted in recent years. It is worthy to note that IPv6 also improves the design of the family of IP-based management protocols, namely, ICMPv6, so that the efficiency of transmission is significantly improved. Following this trend, UPnP also supports IPv6, but this extension concentrates on the address compatibility and neglects to utilize the improved design in IPv6. In light of this, this paper proposes a new service discovery protocol which bases on ICMPv6 in order to make the service discovery of UPnP more compact and efficient. Also, we develop a monitoring tool for developers to troubleshoot the problems of the proposed protocol. We hope this enhancement can make the deployment of IoT in the smart home network more scalable and robust.