IOT NETWORK

Chapter1:
IOT communication models and protocols

Presented by:
Mrs:Amruta .S. Mane
SIBIC institute of technology
• IOT communication models and protocols

• IoT devices are found everywhere and will enable

circulatory intelligence in the future. For operational
perception, it is important and useful to understand
how various IoT devices communicate with each
other. Communication models used in IoT have great
value. The IoTs allow people and things to be
connected any time, any space, with anything and
anyone, using any network and any service.
 Application models

• IoT is simple in theory: Use the vast connectivity of

the internet to send data from the tiniest devices --
such as switches and sensors -- to the cloud, on-
premises server farms or large-scale data platforms
to model the world more accurately. That model
forms the foundation for entire new classes of
applications, analyses and previously unimagined
efficiencies and optimizations.
How the application layer works
•IoT makes use of the Open Systems Interconnection model, which
employs seven interactive layers to handle each phase of message
transport. The IoT application layer is one of seven layers, three of
which are of particular importance to IoT application protocols.

•The physical network layer is the actual infrastructure that is moving

the data, such as Ethernet, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

•The transport layer is the protocol supporting the movement of the

data, such as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), HTTP or User
Datagram Protocol (UDP).

•The application layer is the interface between the IoT device and the
network with which it will communicate. It handles data formatting and
presentation and serves as the bridge between what the IoT device is
doing and the network handoff of the data it produces.
The right protocol for a particular IoT application depends on a number
of factors based on the type of device involved and the function it
will perform:

• Data latency. How fast does data transport need to be? How much
time can reasonably pass for a data packet to move from one point
to another?
• Reliability. How consequential is data loss in the IoT application?
How redundant must device communication be?
• Bandwidth. What's the volume of data that needs to be
accommodated?
• Transport. What's the best transport protocol for the IoT
application? TCP, UDP and HTTP each offer features that can be
exploited by application layer protocols with which they're
compatible.
 HTTP
• Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
• WWW is about communication between web clients and
servers

• Communication between client computers and web servers is

done by sending HTTP Requests and receiving HTTP
Responses
• The World Wide Web is about communication
between web clients and web servers.
• Clients are often browsers (Chrome, Edge, Safari),
but they can be any type of program or device.
• Servers are most often computers in the cloud.
 HTTP Request / Response
Communication between clients and servers is done by
requests and responses:
1. A client (a browser) sends an HTTP request to the web
2. A web server receives the request
3. The server runs an application to process the request
4. The server returns an HTTP response (output) to the
browser
5. The client (the browser) receives the response
How it works
 Features of HTTP

• Stateless: each request is considered as the new request. When a

client searches something in web browser. The request will go on for
server and thus server receive a request from clients. Now the client
forget about its request and its server duty to give response back to client
• Connectionless: When a request from client and response from server
for that request happened successfully. The client and server forget about
their previous action.
• Media independent: This protocol helps to transfer any media type like
audio, video, gif. As long as both client and server side are equipped to
handle those media file.
• It offers lower CPU and memory usage due to less simultaneous
connections.
• It offers reduced network congestion as there are fewer TCP
connections.
 CoAP
Constrained Application Protocol

• It is a specialized web transfer protocol for use with constrained nodes

and constrained networks in the Internet of Things.

•CoAP is designed to enable simple, constrained devices to join the IoT

even through constrained networks with low bandwidth and low
availability.

•It is generally used for machine-to-machine (M2M) applications such

as smart energy and building automation.
Example Of CoAP
 CoAP message types
•CON (Confirmable)

•NON (Non-confirmable) 

•ACK (Acknowledgement) 

•RST (Reset)
 1. Confirmable(CON)

• Some messages require an acknowledgement. These

messages are called "Confirmable". When no packets
are lost, each confirmable message elicits exactly one
return message of type Acknowledgement or type Reset.

• A confirmable message always carries either a request

or response and MUST NOT be empty.
 2. Non-Confirmabale(NON)

• Some other messages do not require an

acknowledgement. This is particularly true for messages
that are repeated regularly for application requirements,
such as repeated readings from a sensor where eventual
arrival is sufficient.

• A non-confirmable message always carries either a

request or response, as well, and MUST NOT be empty.
 3. Acknowledgement(ACK)

• An Acknowledgement message acknowledges that a

specific confirmable message (identified by its Message
ID) arrived. It does not indicate success or failure of any
encapsulated request.

• The acknowledgement message MUST echo the

Message ID of the confirmable message, and MUST
carry a response or be empty
 4.Reset(RST)

• A Reset message indicates that a specific message

(confirmable or non-confirmable) was received, but some
context is missing to properly process it. This condition is
usually caused when the receiving node has rebooted
and has forgotten some state that would be required to
interpret the message.

• A reset message MUST echo the Message ID of the

confirmable or non-confirmable message, and MUST be
empty.
 •
CoAp Request/Response Model

• The CoAP Request/Response is the second layer in the

CoAP abstraction layer. The request is sent using a
Confirmable (CON) or Non-Confirmable (NON)
message. There are several scenarios depending on if
the server can answer immediately to the client request
or the answer if not available.
• If the server can answer immediately to the client
request, then if the request is carried using a
Confirmable message (CON), the server sends back to
the client an Acknowledge message containing the
response or the error code:
There is a Token. The Token is different from the Message-ID and it is used
to match the request and the response.
• If the server can’t answer to the request coming from the client
immediately, then it sends an Acknowledge message with an empty
response. As soon as the response is available, then the server sends a
new Confirmable message to the client containing the response. At this
point, the client sends back an Acknowledge message:
 Features
• Web protocol used in M2M with constrained
requirements
• Asynchronous message exchange
• Low overhead and very simple to parse
• URI and content-type support
• Proxy and caching capabilities
 MQTT
• MQTT stands for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport.
MQTT is a simple messaging protocol, designed for constrained
devices with low bandwidth. So, it’s the perfect solution to
exchange data between multiple IoT devices.
•MQTT communication works as
a publish and subscribe system. Devices publish messages on
a specific topic. All devices that are subscribed to that topic
receive the message.
•MQTT is an OASIS standard messaging protocol for the
Internet of Things (IoT). It is designed as an extremely
lightweight publish/subscribe messaging transport that is ideal
for connecting remote devices with a small code footprint and
minimal network bandwidth. MQTT today is used in a wide
variety of industries, such as automotive, manufacturing,
telecommunications, oil and gas, etc.
• MQTT stands for Message Queuing Telemetry
Transport. MQTT is a machine to machine internet of
things connectivity protocol. It is an extremely lightweight
and publish-subscribe messaging transport protocol. This
protocol is useful for the connection with the remote
location where the bandwidth is a premium. These
characteristics make it useful in various situations,
including constant environment such as for
communication machine to machine and internet of things
contexts. It is a publish and subscribe system where we
can publish and receive the messages as a client. It
makes it easy for communication between multiple
devices. It is a simple messaging protocol designed for
the constrained devices and with low bandwidth, so it's a
perfect solution for the internet of things applications.
Example of MQTT
 MQTT components

• Message
• Client
• Server or Broker
• TOPIC
 • Message

The message is the data that is carried out by the protocol across the
network for the application. When the message is transmitted over
the network, then the message contains the following parameters:

1. Payload data
2. Quality of Service (QoS)
3. Collection of Properties
4. Topic Name
 • Client

In MQTT, the subscriber and publisher are the two roles of a client. The
clients subscribe to the topics to publish and receive messages. In simple
words, we can say that if any program or device uses an MQTT, then that
device is referred to as a client. A device is a client if it opens the network
connection to the server, publishes messages that other clients want to
see, subscribes to the messages that it is interested in receiving,
unsubscribe to the messages that it is not interested in receiving, and
closes the network connection to the server.

In MQTT, the client performs two operations:

Publish: When the client sends the data to the server, then we call this
operation as a publish.
Subscribe: When the client receives the data from the server, then we call
this operation a subscription.
 • Server

The device or a program that allows the client to publish the

messages and subscribe to the messages. A server
accepts the network connection from the client, accepts the
messages from the client, processes the subscribe and
unsubscribe requests, forwards the application messages
to the client, and closes the network connection from the
client.
 • TOPIC

The label provided to the message is checked against the subscription

known by the server is known as TOPIC.
 MQTT components

• In this model, publisher, subscriber, and the

broker are the basic elements for accomplishing
communication between the IoT devices . MQTT follows
a TCP-based connection establishment procedure. The
device sends MQTT a request message, CONNECT, to
connect with the broker.
 MQTT – Publish/Subscribe

The first concept is the publish and subscribe system. In a publish and

subscribe system, a device can publish a message on a topic, or it can
be subscribed to a particular topic to receive messages

•For example Device 1 publishes on a topic.

•Device 2 is subscribed to the same topic that device 1 is publishing
in.
•So, device 2 receives the message.
 MQTT – Broker

•The MQTT broker is responsible for receiving all

messages, filtering the messages, deciding who is interested in them,
and then publishing the message to all subscribed clients.
 Characteristics of MQTT
•Lightweight and efficient: MQTT Client is and requires fewer device
resources. The MQTT message header is very small, which can
optimize the network bandwidth.

•Two-way communication: MQTT allows message delivery both from

device to cloud and from cloud to the device.

•Reliable message delivery: MQTT has three defined service quality

levels: 0-at most once, 1-at least once, 2-exactly once. The reliability of
message delivery can be guaranteed according to business scenarios.

•Support for unreliable networks: Many IoT devices are connected via
unreliable cellular networks. MQTT's support for persistent sessions
reduces the time to reconnect the client to the broker.

•Security: MQTT allows you to easily use TLS to encrypt messages and
use modern authentication protocols (such as OAuth) to authenticate the
client.
 AMQP

•The Advanced Message Queuing

Protocol (AMQP) is an open standard for passing
business messages between applications or
organizations.
•It is open standard application layer protocol
for message-oriented middleware. The defining
features of AMQP are message orientation,
queuing, routing (including point-to-point and
publish-and-subscribe), reliability and
security.

•AMQP was development in order to give

possibility different applications and system
working together regardless of their internal
structure.
 Features

• Message orientation,
• Queuing,
• Routing,
• Reliability and security,
• Targeted Qos (Quality of service),
• Standards compliance and safety,
• Persistence,
• Delivery of message to multiple consumers,
• High speed protocol, etc.
 Components of AMQP

• Message Queue.
• Exchanges and Exchange Types.
• Binding.
• Message and Content.
• Connection.
• Channel.
• Virtual Hosts.
• AMQP Methods.
• Message Queue
A queue acts as a buffer that stores messages that are consumed later.
A queue can also be declared with a number of attributes during
creation. For instance, it can be marked as durable, auto-delete and
exclusive, where exclusive means that it can be used by only one
connection and this queue will be deleted when that connection closes.
• Exchanges and Exchange Types
A channel routes messages to a queue depending on the exchange
type and bindings between the exchange and the queue. For a queue to
receive messages, it must be bound to at least one exchange.
AMQP 0.9.1 brokers should provide four exchange types - direct
exchange, fanout exchange, topic exchange, and header exchange. A
deeper understanding of the different exchange types, bindings, routing
keys and how or when you should use them can be found in RabbitMQ
for beginners - Exchanges, routing keys and bindings.
An exchange can be declared with a number of attributes during
creation. For instance, it can be marked as durable so that it survives a
broker restart, or it can be marked as auto-delete meaning that it’s
automatically deleted when the last queue is unbound.
•Binding
A binding is a relation between a queue and an exchange consisting of a
set of rules that the exchange uses (among other things) to route
messages to queues.

•Message and Content

A message is an entity sent from the publisher to the queue and finally
subscribed to by the consumer. Each message contains a set of headers
defining properties such as life duration, durability, and priority.
AMQP 0.9.1 also has a built-in feature called message acknowledgment that is
used to confirm message delivery and/or processing.

•Connection
A connection in AMQP 0.9.1 is a network connection between your application
and the AMQP broker, e.g. a TCP/IP socket connection.

•Channel
A channel is a virtual connection inside a connection, between two AMQP
peers. Message publishing or consuming to or from a queue is performed over
a channel (AMQP). A channel is multiplexed, one single connection can have
multiple channels.
•Virtual Hosts
Virtual hosts (vhost) provide a way to segregate applications in the broker. Different
users can have different access privileges to different vhost. Queues and exchanges
is created so they only exist in one vhost.

•AMQP Methods
AMQP 0.9.1 provides a number of methods or operations that can be performed.
Some examples of AMQP methods are opening a channel, declaring a queue or
deleting an exchange (channel.open, queue.declare or exchange.delete-ok)
•Message Producers are the source of messages. It sends messages
to specific destinations such as Queue or Topics which is then
consumed by the subscribers.
•Message Consumers are the subscribers that receive/read the
published messages and processes it.
•Message Brokers are the servers like ActiveMQ, RabbitMQ which does
the heavy lifting such as routing the messages to the right destination,
ensuring its delivery and durabilities and so on. Brokers are the
middleware between producers and consumers. This is the reason why it
is often referred to as Message Oriented Middleware. A message broker
can have further components like Queues, Topics, Exchanges etc
depending on the vendors.
•Messages are the main reason why messaging architecture exists, it is
the actual content with headers and metadata. The message body
(content) can contain binary, JSON, XML, plain text type and etc data.
 Communication APIs

• A communication API is a type of application programming

interface (API) that adds communications channels to
particular software. ... an API, in its most basic terms, is a piece of
code that allows two pieces of software hosted on the cloud to
connect to each other and transfer information.
Generally we used Two APIs For IoT Communication
REST-based Communication APIs
WebSocket-based Communication APIs

REST-based Communication APIs

Representational state transfer (REST) is a set of architectural principles by

which you can design Web services the Web APIs that focus on systems’s
resources and how resource states are addressed and transferred. REST APIs
that follow the request response communication model, the rest architectural
constraint apply to the components, connector and data elements,  within a
distributed hypermedia system.
 WebSocket based communication API
Web Socket APIs allow bi-directional, full-duplex communication between
clients and servers. It follows the exclusive pair communication model. This
Communication API does not require a new connection to be set up for each
message to be sent between clients and servers. Once the connection is set up
the messages can be sent and received continuously without any interruption.
WebSocket APIs are suitable for IoT Applications with low latency or high
throughput requirements. 
  

Network Layer Protocols

Network is the OSI Level 3 layer and is the internet layer in the TCP-IP model. Like
 Physical and MAC layers, network layer is also part of the infrastructure layer in
IOT reference architecture.
This layer is responsible for addressing and routing of data packets. At this layer,
the datagram from transport layer are encapsulated to data packets and delivered
to their destinations using IP addressing. IPv4 had been the standard protocol for
network layer until now. The IPv4 has a limited address space which has been
already exhausted and incapable to cope up with the scalability of the IOT
applications. The new IPv6 standard has been developed to accommodate address
space sufficient to enable addressing the billions of IOT devices. There are also
many protocol stacks which are based on IPv6 addressing that are developed
considering IOT scenario. 
 IPV4

• IP stands for Internet Protocol and v4 stands for Version

Four (IPv4). IPv4 was the primary version brought into action for
production within the ARPANET in 1983. 

• IP version four addresses are 32-bit integers which will be expressed

in decimal notation. 
Example- 192.0.2.126 could be an IPv4 address. 

• IPv4 is still the widely used network layer protocol used for
networking computers. IPv4 addresses are expressed as dotted
decimal numbers. The address consist of four octets (32-bit number)
divided into two parts – network address to uniquely identify a TCP-
IP or IOT network and host address to identify host within the
identified network.
• Parts of IPv4
• Network part: 
The network part indicates the distinctive variety that’s
appointed to the network. The network part conjointly
identifies the category of the network that’s assigned.
• Host Part: 
The host part uniquely identifies the machine on your
network. This part of the IPv4 address is assigned to every
host. 
For each host on the network, the network part is the same,
however, the host half must vary.
• Subnet number: 
This is the nonobligatory part of IPv4. Local networks that
have massive numbers of hosts are divided into subnets and
subnet numbers are appointed to that.
• Characteristics of IPv4
• IPv4 could be a 32-Bit IP Address.
• IPv4 could be a numeric address, and its bits are separated by a
dot.
• The number of header fields is twelve and the length of the header
field is twenty.
• It has Unicast, broadcast, and multicast style of addresses.
• IPv4 supports VLSM (Virtual Length Subnet Mask).
• IPv4 uses the Post Address Resolution Protocol to map to the MAC
address.
• RIP may be a routing protocol supported by the routed daemon.
• Networks ought to be designed either manually or with DHCP.
• Packet fragmentation permits from routers and causing host.
•IP (version 4) addresses are 32-bit integers that can be expressed in
hexadecimal notation. The more common format, known as dotted quad
or dotted decimal, is x.x.x.x, where each x can be any value between 0
and 255. For example, 192.0.2.146 is a valid IPv4 address.
•IPv4 still routes most of today’s internet traffic. A 32-bit address space
limits the number of unique hosts to 232, which is nearly 4.3 billion IPv4
addresses for the world to use (4,294,967,296, to be exact).
 Header Format

•An IPv4 datagram consists of a header and a data field. The first
20 bytes in the header are mandatory for all IPv4 datagrams. The
Options field following the 20 bytes has a variable length.
IP header includes many relevant information including Version Number,
which, in this context, is 4. Other details are as follows −
• Version − Version no. of Internet Protocol used (e.g. IPv4).
• IHL − Internet Header Length; Length of entire IP header.
• DSCP − Differentiated Services Code Point; this is Type of Service.
• ECN − Explicit Congestion Notification; It carries information about the
congestion seen in the route.
• Total Length − Length of entire IP Packet (including IP header and IP
Payload).
• Identification − If IP packet is fragmented during the transmission, all
the fragments contain same identification number. to identify original IP
packet they belong to.
• Flags − As required by the network resources, if IP Packet is too large
to handle, these ‘flags’ tells if they can be fragmented or not. In this 3-bit
flag, the MSB is always set to ‘0’.
• Fragment Offset − This offset tells the exact position of the
fragment in the original IP Packet.
•Time to Live − To avoid looping in the network, every packet is sent
with some TTL value set, which tells the network how many routers
(hops) this packet can cross. At each hop, its value is decremented by
one and when the value reaches zero, the packet is discarded.
•Protocol − Tells the Network layer at the destination host, to which
Protocol this packet belongs to, i.e. the next level Protocol. For
example protocol number of ICMP is 1, TCP is 6 and UDP is 17.
•Header Checksum − This field is used to keep checksum value of
entire header which is then used to check if the packet is received
error-free.
•Source Address − 32-bit address of the Sender (or source) of the
packet.
•Destination Address − 32-bit address of the Receiver (or destination)
of the packet.
•Options − This is optional field, which is used if the value of IHL is
greater than 5. These options may contain values for options such as
Security, Record Route, Time Stamp, etc.
 Advantages of IPv4
•IPv4 security permits encryption to keep up privacy and security.

•IPV4 network allocation is significant and presently has quite 85000

practical routers.

•It becomes easy to attach multiple devices across an outsized

network while not NAT.

•This is a model of communication so provides quality service also as

economical knowledge transfer.

•IPV4 addresses are redefined and permit flawless encoding.

•Routing is a lot of scalable and economical as a result of addressing

is collective more effectively.

•Data communication across the network becomes a lot of specific in

multicast organizations.
 IPV6
• IP address is your digital identity. It’s a network address for your computer
so the Internet knows where to send you emails, data, etc .
• IP address determines who and where you are in the network of billions of
digital devices that are connected to the Internet.
• IPv6 or Internet Protocol Version 6 is a network layer protocol that allows
communication to take place over the network. IPv6 was designed by
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in December 1998 with the
purpose of superseding the IPv4 due to the global exponentially growing
internet users.
• An IPv6 address consists of eight groups of four hexadecimal digits.
Here’s an example IPv6 address:
• 3001:0da8:75a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
• This new IP address version is being deployed to fulfill the need for
more Internet addresses. It was aimed to resolve issues which are
associated with IPv4. With 128-bit address space, it allows 340
undecillion unique address space. IPv6 also called IPng (Internet
Protocol next generation).
Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) is a network layer protocol that
enables data communications over a packet switched network. Packet
switching involves the sending and receiving of data in packets between
two nodes in a network. The working standard for the IPv6 protocol was
published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 1998. The
IETF specification for IPv6 is RFC 2460. IPv6 was intended to replace
the widely used Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) that is considered the
backbone of the modern Internet. IPv6 is often referred to as the “next
generation Internet” because of its expanded capabilities and its growth
through recent large scale deployments. In 2004, Japan and Korea were
acknowledged as having the first public deployments of IPv6.
Types of IPv6 Address

Now that we know about what is IPv6 address let’s take a look at its
different types.
1. Unicast addresses
It identifies a unique node on a network and usually refers to a single
sender or a single receiver.
2. Multicast addresses
It represents a group of IP devices and can only be used as the
destination of a datagram.
3. Anycast addresses
It is assigned to a set of interfaces that typically belong to different
nodes.
 IPV6 packet format

An IPv6 basic header is fixed as 40 bytes long and has eight fields.
Each IPv6 packet must have an IPv6 basic header that provides
basic packet forwarding information, and which all devices parse
on the forwarding path.
• Version: 4 bits long. In IPv6, the value of the Version field is set to
6.
• Traffic Class: 8 bits long. This field indicates the class or priority of
an IPv6 packet. The Traffic Class field is similar to the TOS field in
an IPv4 packet and is mainly used in QoS control.
• Flow Label: 20 bits long. This field was added in IPv6 to
differentiate traffic. A flow label and source IP address identify a data
flow. Intermediate network devices can effectively differentiate data
flows based on this field.
• Payload Length: 16 bits long. This field indicates the length of the
IPv6 payload in bytes. The payload is the part of the IPv6 packet
following the IPv6 basic header, including the extension header and
upper-layer PDU. This field has a maximum value of 65535. If the
payload length exceeds 65535 bytes, the field is set to 0, and the
Jumbo Payload option in the Hop-by-Hop Options header is used to
express the actual payload length.
• Next Header: 8 bits long. This field identifies the type of the first
extension header that follows the IPv6 basic header or the protocol
type in the upper-layer PDU.
•Hop Limit: 8 bits long. This field is similar to the Time to Live field in an
IPv4 packet, defining the maximum number of hops that an IP packet can
pass through. Each device that forwards the packet decrements the field
value by 1. If the field value is reduced to 0, the packet is discarded.
•Source Address: 128 bits long. This field indicates the address of the
packet originator.
•Destination Address: 128 bits long. This field indicates the address of the
packet recipient.

Unlike the IPv4 packet header, the IPv6 packet header does not carry IHL,
identifier, flag, fragment offset, header checksum, option, or padding fields,
but it carries the flow label field. This facilitates IPv6 packet processing and
improves processing efficiency. To support various options without
changing the existing packet format, the Extension Header information field
is added to the IPv6 packet header, improving flexibility. The following
paragraphs describe IPv6 extension headers.
 Advantages of IPv6

1. Reliability
2. Faster Speeds: IPv6 supports multicast rather than broadcast
in IPv4.This feature allows bandwidth-intensive packet flows
(like multimedia streams) to be sent to multiple destinations all
at once.
3. Stringer Security: IP Security, which provides confidentiality,
and data integrity, is embedded into IPv6.
4. Routing efficiency
5. Most importantly it’s the final solution for growing nodes in
Global-network.
IPv4(Internet Protocol version 4) IPv6(Internet Protocol version 6)

The Address space is 32 bits. The address space is 128 bits.

Into the ip4 is used 4 bytes for each

And Into the ip4 is used 16 bytes for
address in the Header.
each address in the Header.

The header's length capacity is 20

bytes. The header's length capacity is 40 bytes.

The number of Header field is 12 in The number of Header field is 8 in ip6.

ip4.
Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) with
Internet Protocol Security (IPSec)
respect to network security is mandatory.
with respect to network security is
optional.
Checksum field eliminated from the
Checksum field used to measure header as the error in the IP header
the error in the header, required.  are to very crucial. 

Released in 1981 Released in 1999

6LoWPAN
6LoWPAN (IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks),
is a low power wireless mesh network where every node has its own
IPv6 address. This allows the node to connect directly with the Internet
using open standards.
6LoWPAN came to exist from the idea that the Internet Protocol could
and should be applied even to the smallest devices, and that low-
power devices with limited processing capabilities should be able to
participate in the Internet of Things.
 Features
•It works great with open IP standard including TCP, UDP, HTTP,
COAP, MATT and web-sockets.
•It offers end-to-end IP addressable nodes. There’s no need for a
gateway, only a router which can connect the 6LoWPAN network to
IP.
•It supports self-healing, robust and scalable mesh routing.
Offers one-to-many & many-to-one routing.
•The 6LoWPAN mesh routers can route data to others nodes in the
network.
•In a 6LowPAN network, leaf nodes can sleep for a long duration of
time.
•It also offers thorough support for the PHY layer which gives freedom
of frequency band & physical layer, which can be used across
multiple communication platforms like Ethernet, WI-Fi, 802.15.4 or
Sub-1GHz ISM with interoperability at the IP level.
•It is a standard: RFC6282
 Header types
6LoWPAN uses four types of header: (i) dispatch header, (ii) mesh header, (iii)
first fragment header, and subsequent fragment header. These headers are
used to distinguish between point to point small packets, fragmented packets
and mesh transmitted packets

1. Dispatch header :Dispatch header is 8 bits long (Figure 2a). First two bits
are 00 or 01 to indicate dispatch header while the next 6 bits are user to
distinguished between the header type to follow next in this packet. “000001”
for uncompressed IPv6 and “000010” for HCI IPv6 compressed encoding.
2. Mesh header :Mesh header is identified by “10” (Figure 2b). Mesh header is
4 bytes long and deals with the encoding of hop count and link layer source
and destination of packets.
3. Fragmentation headers :Size of fragmentation header in 4 bytes if it is a
first fragment header while 5 bytes for each subsequent fragment header
(Figure 2c and 2d). Fragmentation header is mostly used when a large
packet is come to a node because 802.15.4 can support the payload up to
102 bytes for a frame.
 Applications

The overall system is aimed at providing wireless internet connectivity at low

data rates and with a low duty cycle. However there are many applications where
6LoWPAN is being used:
•General Automation:   There are enormous opportunities for 6LoWPAN to be
used in many different areas of automation.
•Home automation:   There is a large market for home automation. By
connecting using IPv6, it is possible to gain distinct advantages over other IoT
systems. The Thread initiative has been set up to standardize on a protocol
running over 6LoWPAN to enable home automation.
•Smart Grid:   Smart grids enable smart meters and other devices to build a
micro mesh network and they are able to send the data back to the grid
operator’s monitoring and billing system using the IPv6 backbone.
•Industrial monitoring:   Automated factories and industrial plants provide a
great opportunity for 6LoWPAN and using automation, can enable major savings
to be made. The ability of 6LoWPAN to connect to the cloud opens up many
different areas for data monitoring and analysis.
Thank you….