Technical Summary
This document specifies optimizations for the IPv6 Neighbor
Discovery protocol that facilitate its use in 6LoWPAN networks with
sleeping nodes, reducing the reliance on subnet-wide multicast and
making the protocol more robust to high packet loss rates. A
mechanism for Duplicate Address Detection is provided that operates
in the presence of sleeping nodes. In addition, the document
extends ND to support the dissemination of the shared context that
the 6LoWPAN-HC compression format (RFC 6282) relies on to allow
compression of arbitrary prefixes in a 6LoWPAN.
Working Group Summary
This document represents the consensus of the 6LoWPAN community to
update RFC 4944 by making the present specification an integral
part of 6LoWPAN. There has been strong consensus that the present
optimization of the IPv6 Neighbor Discovery protocol is
sufficiently important to justify this significant change.
Document Quality
The document is a product of the 6LoWPAN working group and has been
reviewed in detail by a significant number of 6LoWPAN working group
members. The principal content of the document has been
technically stable for about a year, during which certain fringe
cases were identified by implementers and addressed in minor
updates to the specification. The specification has been picked up
widely in the 6LoWPAN community and has been subject to extensive
interoperability testing in vendor organizations such as ZigBee and
IPSO.
The document is the result of a "reboot" of its development
process, in which a number of simplifications have been made by
striking potential requirements that earlier versions (pre -09)
attempted to address. As it stands, it now represents a strong WG
consensus. No IPR disclosures have been made.
Personnel
Carsten Bormann <cabo@tzi.org> is the Document Shepherd. Ralph
Droms <rdroms.ietf@gmail.com> is the Responsible AD.