Subject: Protocol Action: 'Neighbor Discovery Optimization for Low Power and Lossy Networks (6LoWPAN)' to Proposed Standard (draft-ietf-6lowpan-nd-21.txt)

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2012 07:41:14 -0700

The IESG has approved the following document:
- 'Neighbor Discovery Optimization for Low Power and Lossy Networks
   (6LoWPAN)'
  (draft-ietf-6lowpan-nd-21.txt) as Proposed Standard

This document is the product of the IPv6 over Low power WPAN Working
Group.

The IESG contact persons are Ralph Droms and Brian Haberman.

A URL of this Internet Draft is:
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-6lowpan-nd/

Technical Summary

   This document specifies optimizations for the IPv6 Neighbor
   Discovery protocol that facilitate its use in 6LoWPAN networks with
   sleeping nodes, reducing the reliance on subnet-wide multicast and
   making the protocol more robust to high packet loss rates.  A
   mechanism for Duplicate Address Detection is provided that operates
   in the presence of sleeping nodes.  In addition, the document
   extends ND to support the dissemination of the shared context that
   the 6LoWPAN-HC compression format (RFC 6282) relies on to allow
   compression of arbitrary prefixes in a 6LoWPAN.

Working Group Summary

   This document represents the consensus of the 6LoWPAN community to
   update RFC 4944 by making the present specification an integral
   part of 6LoWPAN.  There has been strong consensus that the present
   optimization of the IPv6 Neighbor Discovery protocol is
   sufficiently important to justify this significant change. 

Document Quality

   The document is a product of the 6LoWPAN working group and has been
   reviewed in detail by a significant number of 6LoWPAN working group
   members.  The principal content of the document has been
   technically stable for about a year, during which certain fringe
   cases were identified by implementers and addressed in minor
   updates to the specification.  The specification has been picked up
   widely in the 6LoWPAN community and has been subject to extensive
   interoperability testing in vendor organizations such as ZigBee and
   IPSO.

   The document is the result of a "reboot" of its development
   process, in which a number of simplifications have been made by
   striking potential requirements that earlier versions (pre -09)
   attempted to address.  As it stands, it now represents a strong WG
   consensus.  No IPR disclosures have been made.

Personnel

   Carsten Bormann <[email-masked]> is the Document Shepherd.  Ralph
   Droms <[email-masked]> is the Responsible AD.