On the Internet of Things » Internet of Things

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.

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.

6LoWPAN Book Completed

zdshelby — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:17:25 +0000

Last week we completed the “6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet” book manuscript, which is now in production at Wiley. Shipping is expected in November 2009. I know there is a huge need for more tutorial and educational material about 6LoWPAN. We will do our best to launch the web-site for the book including tutorial and course material already in September. It is now officially available on Wiley’s home page:

6LoWPAN: The Wireless Embedded Internet

6LoWPAN Book Announcement

zdshelby — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:24:59 +0000

We are completing the world’s first book all about 6LoWPAN for John Wiley & Sons together with Carsten Bormann, co-chair of the 6lowpan working group. Here is a sneak preview.

The book will be announced officially in June by Wiley, and is expected to start shipping to readers this December. It gives the complete picture of 6LoWPAN technology all in one place, including deployment examples and implementation aspects. It is aimed at experts in the field, engineering students and lecturers. An accompanying web-site will be launched this fall including course material, Contiki coding exercises, an author blog and other 6LoWPAN information.

Example book figure

Table of Contents

Introduction
The 6LoWPAN Format
Bootstrapping and Commissioning
Mobility and Routing
Application Protocols
Implementation Issues
Deployment Examples
Conclusion

A – IPv6 Reference
B – IEEE 802.15.4 Reference

2014 Olympics

zdshelby — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:28:14 +0000

I find sports, wellbeing and tourism to be really exciting, down-to-earth applications for Internet of Things technology. These are applications that touch people’s everyday lives and are easy to relate to. The ultimate sport application is of course the Olympics.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics were an incredible showcase for Internet technology. The event was 100% IPv6, included embedded IPv6 cameras, building automation systems, taxi monitoring and mobile devices for staff – the largest production IPv6 deployment to date, and an exciting IPv6 IoT experiment as well. Hats of to the Chinese organizers’ IT team, great work. Read more technical details here.

The 2014 Sochi Winter Olypics hosted in Russia, will be the ultimate showcase for embedded IPv6 and 6LoWPAN technology. Finland is known for supplying Russia with building and technology experience, and Sochi will be no exception. Snowpolis, a leading wellbeing, sport and winter technology park (where my office is) – has been elected to coordinate the Finnish effort to bid on Sochi contracts for building the sport and tourism infrastructure needed there. Sochi is currently a village in southern Russia. Almost the entire transportation, tourism and sport infrastructure needs to be built from scratch. I am excited to be working with Snowpolis in this process, on the exciting array of 6LoWPAN applications possible at Sochi. If you have ideas where low-power IPv6 could be applied at the 2014 Olympics, I’d love to hear them!

ZigBee vs. IPv6?

zdshelby — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:17:13 +0000

Something is bothering me. I keep hearing that ZigBee and 6LoWPAN are competing technologies. The ZigBee Alliance has taken a stand to force such a confrontation. Its like comparing apples and, well, New York

6LoWPAN = IPv6 = The Internet

Think about it. The Internet… the most successfull, innovative, massive network ever created. Now what was that Zig thing called again? Does anyone even remember the proprietary, link-specific networking protocols from the 90s?

Here is why ZigBee is not competetive, and shouldn’t be compared to 6LoWPAN and IPv6:

ZigBee = small-scale isolated ad-hoc networking. 6LoWPAN = massively scalable networking as an end-to-end part of the Internet, it is IPv6!
ZigBee = limited to a single radio standard. 6LoWPAN = applicable to any low-power, low-rate wireless radio (or even wired! See Watteco). IP protocols tie together heterogeneous networks.
The only good part of ZigBee is application protocol profiles. And guess what, there is an IETF specification for using ZigBee profiles over UDP/IP. http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-tolle-cap-00.txt
ZigBee is not a standard, it is a special interest group. Will it be around in a few years? The IETF produces open, long-lived, standards. IPv6 will be around for 20+ years.
Large-scale enterprise automation, M2M, metering systems etc. require end-to-end addressing, security, mobility, traffic multiplexing, reusability, maintainability, and web-services which are globally scalable… this is the kind of thing IPv6 was designed for.

I only see one option for ZigBee, and that is to get properly networked. I bet soon we’ll be seeing something called ZigBee/IP 2010.

ZigBee over UDP/IPv6

First Post

zdshelby — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 21:37:38 +0000

Welcome to On the Internet of Things.

The purpose of this blog, is to keep people informed on what is happening in Internet of Things standardization, technology and business from an insider’s view. I have the pleasure of watching a technical and business revolution in the Internet happen from the inside, as a day job! As an early researcher in embedded IP, and later starting the world’s first 6LoWPAN networking company Sensinode, the last decade has been extremely interesting. The great part is that this was only the beginning. Activities in the IETF, the new IPSO Alliance, and a business awakening to embedded IP and WSN technology are starting to make the Internet of Things a reality.

Through this blog I will be sharing the inside story on Internet of Things developments through my activities at Sensinode, the IETF, the IPSO Alliance, the SENSEI project, open-source projects, and a touch of common sense opinion.

Enjoy!
Zach Shelby