Neighbor Discovery++: A low-overhead address auto-configuration to enable robust internet of things architectures

Abstract

With the approaching vision of the Internet of Things smart devices tend to be exploited in a variety of business processes and applications. In order to serve their demands, it is necessary to ensure self-configuration, self-adaptation and self-management capabilities. The Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is a good basis for the networking layer of the Internet of Things. However, its internal mechanisms often fail in ad hoc, mobile set-ups which are common among smart devices. To address these challenges in the field of stateless address auto-configuration, we have proposed an IPv6 Neighbor Discovery++ protocol. In this article we present the protocol overhead evaluation in the set-ups allowing to achieve duplication detection reliability close to 100%. The results reveal that only a few messages per node are sufficient to verify address uniqueness in diversified network environments. Hence, the solution can serve the requirements of robust Internet of Things architectures.