6LowApp: Problem Statement for 6LoWPAN and LLN Application Protocols
Universitaet Bremen TZI
Pacific Gas and Electric
Sensinode
The 6LoWPAN and ROLL WGs are laying the groundwork to make the Wireless Embedded Internet a reality, but what application protocols will we use? Request-response protocols like HTTP are a poor fit to a communication model with battery-operated, mostly sleeping nodes. In addition, the usual data formats (both headers and body) are perceived to be too chatty for the 50-60 byte payloads possible in LoWPANs and to require too much code for the 8-bit and 16-bit processors dominating the Internet of Things. Still, it would be a mistake to start a new silo of application protocols that do not benefit from existing application area Internet experience. This document provides a problem statement for possible work on of application protocols in 6LoWPAN networks or, more generally, in low- power, lossy networks, as well as some considerations for required related work.