6LoWPAN

6LoWPAN (acronym of "IPv6 over Low-Power Wireless Personal Area Networks")^[1] was a working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).^[2] It was created with the intention of applying the Internet Protocol (IP) even to the smallest devices,^[3] enabling low-power devices with limited processing capabilities to participate in the Internet of Things.^[1]

The 6LoWPAN group defined encapsulation, header compression, neighbor discovery and other mechanisms that allow IPv6 to operate over IEEE 802.15.4 based networks. Although IPv4 and IPv6 protocols do not generally care about the physical and MAC layers they operate over, the low-power devices and small packet size defined by IEEE 802.15.4 make it desirable to adapt to these layers.^[4]

The base specification developed by the 6LoWPAN IETF group is RFC 4944 (updated by RFC 6282 with header compression, RFC 6775 with neighbor discovery optimization, RFC 8931 with selective fragment recovery and with smaller changes in RFC 8025 and RFC 8066). The problem statement document is RFC 4919. IPv6 over Bluetooth Low Energy using 6LoWPAN techniques is described in RFC 7668.

^ ^a ^b Zach Shelby and Carsten Bormann (2011-05-23). "6LoWPAN: The wireless embedded Internet – Part 1: Why 6LoWPAN?". eetimes. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Retrieved 2022-06-24. in '6LoWPAN: The Embedded Internet', Shelby and Bormann redefine the 6LoWPAN acronym as "IPv6 over lowpower wireless area networks," arguing that "Personal" is no longer relevant to the technology.
^ Cite error: The named reference 6lowpan was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ Mulligan, Geoff, "The 6LoWPAN architecture", EmNets '07: Proceedings of the 4th workshop on Embedded networked sensors, ACM, 2007
^ Cite error: The named reference ietfproblem was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[eetimes-1] Zach Shelby and Carsten Bormann (2011-05-23). "6LoWPAN: The wireless embedded Internet – Part 1: Why 6LoWPAN?". eetimes. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Retrieved 2022-06-24. in '6LoWPAN: The Embedded Internet', Shelby and Bormann redefine the 6LoWPAN acronym as "IPv6 over lowpower wireless area networks," arguing that "Personal" is no longer relevant to the technology.

[6lowpan-2] Cite error: The named reference 6lowpan was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[3] Mulligan, Geoff, "The 6LoWPAN architecture", EmNets '07: Proceedings of the 4th workshop on Embedded networked sensors, ACM, 2007

[ietfproblem-4] Cite error: The named reference ietfproblem was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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