On the interplay between RPL and address autoconfiguration protocols in LLNs

Low-Power and Lossy Networks (LLNs) are an enabling technology for many Internet of Things (IoT) applications. To allow LLNs to interoperate with the Internet the IETF is specifying IP-compatible standards that are specifically designed for embedded devices with small memory and limited computing capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interplay between the recently proposed IETF standard for IPv6 routing in LLNs, called RPL, with state-of-the-art autoconfiguration algorithms that assign network addresses in a hierarchical manner. To this end, we have extended the default RPL implementation available in Contiki operating system to support T-DAAP, LISAA and DAAM addressing schemes. Our experimental results clearly show that the mechanisms used by RPL to configure and maintain a tree-based network topology frequently break address hierarchy, limiting the opportunities for route aggregation. Furthermore, classical techniques used to reduce network instability significantly increase the network set-up times and, in same cases, degrade path qualities.