Technical Summary
This document describes the minimal set of rules to run IPv6 over
an IEEE 802.15.4 Timeslotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) network,
including the operation of the RPL routing protocol and the
procedures to forward packets using a static schedule of shared
time slots in a slotted-aloha fashion.
Working Group Summary
Like for the other 6TiSCH documents, it took a long time and great
care to achieve consensus on the security piece. Considering the
complexity (and issues) in IEEE802.15.4-2011, the group decided
to provide reference examples of how the MAC can be set in order to
achieve interoperability.
Though MAC level messages are widely discussed and many references
to undated IEEE802.15.4 specs are made, and apart from a particular
problem with the IEEE802.15.4e spec that has to be treated in
section 4, the example section 11 is the only place in the document that
has dated IEEE references.
The rest of the document uses undated references so it is preserved
through future backward compatible updates of IEEE802.15.4.
The draft was the subject to an ETSI PlugTest and the Hackathon in Prague.
4 different implementation on multiple platforms and OSes were tested.
Document Quality
There are 3 different open source implementations, Contiki, TinyOS
and Open WSN. Multiple derivatives of Open WSN are also available
and were confronted at the ETSI PlugTest in Prague. There are
also shipping products in the AMI/AMR domain (Wi-NAN) that operate
in pre-standard variations of this work and we expect them
to move to the standard version at some point of time.
There were also discussions on how IEEE specs should be
referenced; the authors followed the best practices obtained
from multiple parties, including the RFC editor and the
IEEE-IETF coordination, of using undated references whenever possible.
Personnel
The document shepherd is Pascal Thubert. The Responsible Area Director is Suresh Krishnan.