On the Internet of Things

IETF Approves CoRE Working Group

zdshelby — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:49:42 +0000

The IETF approved a new working group today called Constrained RESTful Environments (CoRE). This new group aims at specifying a RESTful web service protocol for even the most constrained embedded devices and networks. CoRE will be a major enabler for all kinds of sensor network, M2M and other Internet of Things applications!

CoRE WG Charter:
http://www.ietf.org/dyn/wg/charter/core-charter.html

A very early Internet-Draft on the Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) can be found here:
draft-shelby-core-coap-00

A bit of history behind this group. While writing 6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet we noticed with Carsten Bormann that embedded web services is one of the key missing components for realizing the Internet of Things. The EU project SENSEI noticed very much the same thing, and has developed an architecture and testbed for integrating Smart Objects into the web using a resource model. These together with the tremendous need for related solutions in the energy industry (e.g. Smart Energy 2.0) kicked us into action last summer at the IETF in Stockholm with an interest group called 6lowapp. This produced a tremendous amount of interest, a large number of Internet-Draft submissions and finally resulted in this new WG! Looking forward to the next year.

6LoWPAN Exercises Released

zdshelby — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 09:09:34 +0000

The book exercises have (finally) been released at the 6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet website. This slide set includes an overview of embedded technology typically used in the Wireless Embedded Internet, an overview of embedded development and a short tutorial on Contiki. The slides currently include a small number of Contiki related exercises. Both the Contiki overview and exercises will be continuously updated, so check for updates!

Contiki programming exercises - Learn embedded development and 6LoWPAN programming with the open-source Contiki project

6LoWPAN Book Course Exercises (PPT) Updated 4.3.2010
6LoWPAN Book Course Exercises (PDF) Updated 4.3.2010

Seminar Video Released

zdshelby — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:37:16 +0000

I gave a book release seminar on Dec 6th at the Centre for Internet Excellence in Oulu, Finland. Thanks to the great hosts, we are now releasing the entire seminar in a really professional format on-line. The seminar gave a good overview of 6LoWPAN and the general contents of the book, covering about half of the course material slides and lasts for 80 minutes. Enjoy!

6LoWPAN Seminar Video (80 minutes, MP4) Recorded 6.12.2009

6LoWPAN Christmas Tree

zdshelby — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:10:22 +0000

For the past 6 weeks I have been a beta user of a new 6LoWPAN-based home energy pilot system from the UbiCity project called UBI-AMI (Ubiquitous Automatic Metering Infrastructure). I now have what is likely the world’s first 6LoWPAN controlled Christmas tree – turned on and off from a handy web interface. Nerdy, I know! This tops off lots of other useful things like controlling the car heater and fixing an energy guzzling freezer. More about UBI-AMI in 2010…

Merry Christmas to everyone!

6LoWPAN controlled Christmas tree

6LoWPAN lecture slides available

zdshelby — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:51:08 +0000

Today I released our 6LoWPAN lecture slides on 6lowpan.net:

“The companion lecture slides for 6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet have now been released on The Book page of 6lowpan.net. This first part of the book’s course material includes a suggested course syllabus, and 115 of lecture slides in both PowerPoint and PDF formats. This overview of the book is a good tool for lecturers, students and professionals alike. The slides have been released under a creative commons by-nc-sa license to encourage re-use. The companion exercise slides for Contiki are planned for release in the near future.”

Links to the syllabus and lecture slides:

6LoWPAN Book Course Syllabus (PDF)
6LoWPAN Book Lecture Slides (PPT)
6LoWPAN Book Lecture Slides (PDF)

Upcoming seminar and courses

zdshelby — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 09:00:36 +0000

There is a new post on http://6lowpan.net about an upcoming book seminar talk I will be giving Dec 8th in Finland, along with 6LoWPAN book courses/tutorials that I currently plan on teaching in 2010.

6LoWPAN Book Released

zdshelby — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:32:27 +0000

Our 6LoWPAN book has now been released by Wiley. Last week we received the very first copies directly in Japan while at IETF-76. Pre-orders should start arriving any time now to people. At least we are very pleased with the result, so happy reading! For those who would like a preview an excerpt is available on-line:

“6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet” – Chapter 1

I will be releasing the book’s companion course slides and exercises very soon at http://6lowpan.net.

White paper on 6LoWPAN Neighbor Discovery

zdshelby — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:12:15 +0000

A new white paper is now available from the IPSO Alliance which I wrote together with Samita Chakrabarti from IP Infusion. For someone wanting to understand the Neighbor Discovery solution being developed for use in 6LoWPAN networks this is the best place to start:

“6LoWPAN Neighbor Discovery: A High-level Overview”

The course slides for our upcoming 6LoWAN book will be avialable soon on 6lowpan.net, which include tutorial slides about 6LoWPAN Neighbor Discovery. Or see a recent tutorial I gave on 6LoWPAN at the SenZations summer school.

For those interested in all the details, see the document in progress in the IETF 6lowpan working group. Here is a link to the latest version of the Internet Draft (released two weeks ago): draft-ietf-6lowpan-nd-05

Enjoy!

News from the 75th IETF

zdshelby — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:29:10 +0000

I attended the 75th Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) meeting in Stockholm last week. Here is some of the latest news from IETF activities related to the Internet of Things:

6LoWPAN - The 6lowpan working group is currently moving four Internet-Drafts towards last call in the standards track (Improved Header Compression, 6LoWPAN Neighbor Discovery) and informational track (Use Cases, Routing Requirements). I presented the latest ND draft, which has good consensus and will be going through a round of technical improvements within 2 weeks. Next the WG is looking to re-charter to continue on subjects such as security, MIBs etc.

ROLL – The roll working group presented the RPL (pronounced “ripple”) routing protocol draft, which has been accepted as an official working group document today. This will be the basis for routing over low-power and lossy networks including 6LoWPAN, which still needs lots of contribution to reach a full solution.

New 6lowapp effort - We held a very successful meeting about applications in resource-constrained networks. About 60-70 people attended presentations from Carsten Bormann, Don Sturek (from Pacific Gas & Electric and ZigBee/IP) along with a set of 2-minute stand-ups. The presentation is available here. The feedback from IETF Area Directors was that there is obvious support, motivation and requirements (and that we are in a hurry) – so start working! A 6lowapp mailing list and wiki page will be coming soon, keep tuned.

There was a great presence at the IETF from IPSO members, who held several meetings during the same week. Thanks to the move of ZigBee and the energy industry towards all-IP smart energy we say many new participants in Stockholm. It is really positive to see the collaboration between the IETF, IPSO, ZigBee and Utilities in this area.

6LowApp – Embedded Application Protocols

zdshelby — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:19:20 +0000

We have kicked off a new effort at the IETF called 6LowApp. The goal is to develop application protocols for resource-constrained embedded devices and networks. Now that 6LoWPAN and ROLL are providing a framework for wireless embedded IP networking, the next fronteir is suitable application protocols for discovery, management and data transfer.

IETF 75 (Stockholm) 6LowApp Wiki

Problem Statement Internet-Draft

Please show your support and contibute your ideas for 6LowApp. In Stockholm there will be an informal Bar BOF anyone can attend to show interest and discuss ideas, and you can always show your support on the mailing lists. Keep tuned here, as the process moves forward I’ll keep writing on our progress.