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Terminology in Low power And Lossy Networks
draft-ietf-roll-terminology-11

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This is an older version of an Internet-Draft that was ultimately published as RFC 7102.
Author JP Vasseur
Last updated 2013-03-03 (Latest revision 2013-02-20)
Replaces draft-vasseur-roll-terminology
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draft-ietf-roll-terminology-11
Networking Working Group                                     JP. Vasseur
Internet-Draft                                        Cisco Systems, Inc
Intended status: Informational                         February 16, 2013
Expires: August 20, 2013

              Terminology in Low power And Lossy Networks
                   draft-ietf-roll-terminology-11.txt

Abstract

   The documents defines a terminology for discussing routing
   requirements and solutions for networks referred to as Low power and
   Lossy Networks (LLN).  A LLN is typically composed of many embedded
   devices with limited power, memory, and processing resources
   interconnected by a variety of links.  There is a wide scope of
   application areas for LLNs, including industrial monitoring, building
   automation (e.g.  Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning, lighting,
   access control, fire), connected home, healthcare, environmental
   monitoring, urban sensor networks, energy management, assets
   tracking, refrigeration.

Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
   document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119].

Status of this Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted to IETF in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on August 20, 2013.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the

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   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
   (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
   publication of this document.  Please review these documents
   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   5.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

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1.  Introduction

   This document defines a terminology for discussing routing
   requirements and solutions for networks referred to as Low power and
   Lossy Networks (LLN).

   Low power and Lossy networks (LLNs) are typically composed of many
   embedded devices with limited power, memory, and processing resources
   interconnected by a variety of links, such as IEEE 802.15.4, Low
   Power WiFi.  There is a wide scope of application areas for LLNs,
   including industrial monitoring, building automation (HVAC, lighting,
   access control, fire), connected home, healthcare, environmental
   monitoring, urban sensor networks, energy management, assets tracking
   and refrigeration.

   Since these applications are usually highly specific (for example
   Industrial Automation, Building Automation, ...), it is not uncommon
   to see a number of disparate terms to describe the same device or
   functionality.  Thus in order to avoid confusion or discrepancies,
   this document specifies the common terminology to be used in all ROLL
   Working Group documents.  The terms defined in this document are used
   in [RFC5548],[RFC5673], [RFC5826] and [RFC5867].

   Terminology specific to a particular application are out of the scope
   of this document.

   It is expected that all routing requirements documents defining
   requirements or specifying routing solutions for LLN will use the
   common terminology specified in this document.  This document should
   be listed as an informative reference.

2.  Terminology

   Actuator: a field device that controls a set of equipment.  For
   example, an actuator might control and/or modulates the flow of a gas
   or liquid, control electricity distribution, perform a mechanical
   operation, ...

   AMI: Advanced Metering Infrastructure that makes use of Smart Grid
   technologies.  A canonical Smart Grid application is smart-metering.

   Channel: Radio frequency sub-band used to transmit a modulated signal
   carrying packets.

   Channel Hopping: A procedure by which field devices synchronously
   change channels during operation.

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   Commissioning Tool: Any physical or logical device temporarily added
   to the network for the expressed purpose of setting up the network
   and device operational parameters.  The commisioning tool can also be
   temporarily added to the LLN for scheduled or unscheduled
   maintenance.

   Closed Loop Control: A procedure whereby a device controller controls
   an actuator based on input information sensed by one or more field
   devices.

   Controller: A field device that can receive sensor input and
   automatically change the environment in the facility by manipulating
   digital or analog actuators.

   DA: Distribution Automation, part of Smart Grid.  Encompasses
   technologies for maintenance and management of electrical
   distribution systems.

   Data sink: A device that collects data from nodes in a LLN.

   Downstream: Data direction traveling from outside of the LLN (e.g.
   traffic coming from a LAN, WAN or the Internet) via a LBR.

   Field Device: A field deviced is a physical device placed in the
   network's operating environment (e.g. plant, urban or home).  Field
   devices include sensors, actuators as well as routers and Low power
   and Lossy Network Border Router (including LBR).  A field device is
   usually (but not always) a device with constrained CPU, memory
   footprint, storage capacity, bandwidth and sometimes power (battery
   operated).  At the time of writing, for the sake of illustration, a
   typical sensor or actuator would have a few KBytes of RAM, a few
   dozens of KBytes of ROM/Flash memory, a 8/16/32 bit microcontroller
   and communication capabilities ranging from a few Kbits/s to a few
   hundreds of KBits/s.  Although it is expected to see continuous
   improvements of hardware and software technologies, such devices will
   likely continue to be seen as resource constrained devices compared
   to computers and routers used in the Internet.

   Flash memory: non-volatile memory that can be re-programmed.

   FMS: Facility Management System.  A global term applied across all
   the vertical designations within a building including, Heating,
   Ventilating, and Air Conditioning also referred to as HVAC, Fire,
   Security, Lighting and Elevator control.

   HART: "Highway Addressable Remote Transducer", a group of
   specifications for industrial process and control devices
   administered by the HART Foundation (see [HART]).  The latest version

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   for the specifications is HART7 which includes the additions for
   WirelessHART.

   HVAC: Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning.  A term applied to
   the comfort level of an internal space.

   ISA: "International Society of Automation".  ISA is an ANSI
   accredited standards-making society.  ISA100 is an ISA committee
   whose charter includes defining a family of standards for industrial
   automation.  [ISA100.11a] is a working group within ISA100 that is
   working on a standard for monitoring and non-critical process control
   applications.

   LAN: Local Area Network.

   LBR: Low power and lossy network Border Router.  The LBR is a device
   that connects the Low power and Lossy Network to another routing
   domain such as a Local Area Network (LAN), Wide Area Network (WAN) or
   the Internet where a possibly different routing protocol is in
   operation.  The LBR acts as a routing device and may possibly host
   other functions such as data collector or aggregator.

   LLN: Low power and Lossy networks (LLNs) are typically composed of
   many embedded devices with limited power, memory, and processing
   resources interconnected by a variety of links, such as IEEE 802.15.4
   or Low Power WiFi.  There is a wide scope of application areas for
   LLNs, including industrial monitoring, building automation (HVAC,
   lighting, access control, fire), connected home, healthcare,
   environmental monitoring, urban sensor networks, energy management,
   assets tracking and refrigeration..

   MP2P: Multipoint-to-Point is used to describe a particular traffic
   pattern (e.g.  MP2P flows collecting information from many nodes
   flowing inwards towards a collecting sink or an LBR).

   MAC: Medium Access Control.  Refers to algorithms and procedures used
   by the data link layer to coordinate use of the physical layer.

   Non-sleepy Node: A non-sleepy node is a node that always remains in a
   fully powered on state (i.e. always awake) where it has the
   capability to perform RPL protocol communication.

   Open Loop Control: A process whereby a plant operator manually
   manipulates an actuator over the network where the decision is
   influenced by information sensed by field devices.

   PER: Packet Error Rate.  A ratio of the number of unusable packets
   (not received at all, or received in error- even after any applicable

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   error correction has been applied) to the total number of packets
   that would have been been received in the absence of errors.

   P2P: Point To Point.  This refers to traffic exchanged between two
   nodes (regardless of the number of hops between the two nodes).

   P2MP: Point-to-Multipoint traffic refers to traffic between one node
   and a set of nodes.  This is similar to the P2MP concept in Multicast
   or MPLS Traffic Engineering ([RFC4461]and [RFC4875]).  A common RPL
   use case involves P2MP flows from or through a DAG root outward
   towards other nodes contained in the DAG.

   RAM: Random Access Memory.  The RAM is a volatile memory.

   RFID: Radio Frequency IDentification.

   ROM: Read Only Memory.

   ROLL: Routing Over Low power and Lossy networks.

   RPL Domain: A RPL routing domain is a collection of RPL routers under
   the control of a single administration.  The boundaries of routing
   domains are defined by network management by setting some links to be
   exterior, or inter-domain, links.

   Schedule: An agreed execution, wake-up, transmission, reception,
   etc., time-table between two or more field devices.

   Sensor: A sensor is a device that measures a physical quantity and
   converts it to a analog or digital signal that can be read by a
   program or a user.  Sensed data can be of many types: electromagnetic
   (e.g. current, voltage, power, resistance, ...) , mechanical (e.g.
   pressure, flow, liquid density, humidity, ...), chemical (e.g.
   oxygen, carbon monoxide, ...), acoustic (e.g. noise, ultrasound), ...

   Sleepy Node: A sleepy node is a node that may sometimes go into a
   sleep mode (i.e. go into a low power state to conserve power) and
   temporarily suspend protocol communication.  A sleepy node may also
   sometimes remain in a fully powered on state where it has the
   capability to perform RPL protocol communication.

   Smart Grid: A Smart Grid is a broad class of applications to network
   and automate utility infrastructure.

   Timeslot: A Timeslot is a fixed time interval that may be used for
   the transmission or reception of a packet between two field devices.
   A timeslot used for communications is associated with a slotted-link

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   Upstream: Data direction traveling from the LLN via the LBR to
   outside of the LLN (LAN, WAN, Internet).

   WAN: Wide Area Network.

3.  IANA Considerations

   This document includes no request for IANA action.

4.  Security Considerations

   Since this document specifies terminology and does not specify new
   procedure or protocols, it raises no new security issue.

5.  Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank Christian Jacquenet, Tim Winter,
   Pieter De Mil, David Meyer, Mukul Goyal and Abdussalam Baryun for
   their valuable feed-back.

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.

6.2.  Informative References

   [HART]     HART Communication Foundation (http://www.hartcomm.org)

   [RFC4461]  Yasukawa, S., "Signaling Requirements for Point-to-
              Multipoint Traffic-Engineered MPLS Label Switched Paths
              (LSPs)", RFC 4461, April 2006.

   [RFC4875]  Aggarwal, R., Papadimitriou, D., and S. Yasukawa,
              "Extensions to Resource Reservation Protocol - Traffic
              Engineering (RSVP-TE) for Point-to-Multipoint TE Label
              Switched Paths (LSPs)", RFC 4875, May 2007.

   [RFC5548]  Dohler, M., Watteyne, T., Winter, T., and D. Barthel,
              "Routing Requirements for Urban Low-Power and Lossy
              Networks", RFC 5548, May 2009.

   [RFC5673]  Pister, K., Thubert, P., Dwars, S., and T. Phinney,
              "Industrial Routing Requirements in Low-Power and Lossy

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              Networks", RFC 5673, October 2009.

   [RFC5826]  Brandt, A., Buron, J., and G. Porcu, "Home Automation
              Routing Requirements in Low-Power and Lossy Networks",
              RFC 5826, April 2010.

   [RFC5867]  Martocci, J., De Mil, P., Riou, N., and W. Vermeylen,
              "Building Automation Routing Requirements in Low-Power and
              Lossy Networks", RFC 5867, June 2010.

Author's Address

   JP Vasseur
   Cisco Systems, Inc
   1414 Massachusetts Avenue
   Boxborough, MA  01719
   USA

   Email: jpv@cisco.com

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