A critical evaluation of the IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low Power and Lossy Networks (RPL)

Abstract : With RPL-the "IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-power Lossy Networks"-emerging as a Proposed Standard "Request For Comment" (RFC) in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) after a ∼2-year development cycle, this paper presents a critical evaluation of the resulting protocol and its applicability and limits. The paper presents a selection of observations of the protocol characteristics, exposes experiences acquired when producing a prototype implementation of RPL, and presents results obtained from testing this protocol-both in a network simulator, and in real-world experiments on a wireless sensor network testbed. The paper aims at providing a better understanding of possible weaknesses and limits of RPL, notably the possible directions that further protocol developments should explore, in order to address these.