Failure Handling in RPL Implementations: An Experimental Qualitative Study

Abstract

The IPv6 Routing Protocol for Low-power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is a recognized standard for routing packets in low-power wireless networks. Its two popular implementations—TinyRPL and ContikiRPL—have been used for both research and commercial purposes. However, despite their wide adoption, qualitative studies of their behavior under various types of failures are essentially lacking. Therefore, in this chapter, we aim to bridge this gap in a manner that may be of interest to both researchers and practitioners. More specifically, we evaluate the two implementations of RPL in a range of link and node failure scenarios. We show that whereas the implementations handle well some classes of failures, for others they exhibit undesirable behaviors or even fail completely. The results thus identify failure scenarios handling which may require additional attention before employing the implementations in real-world dependable embedded systems.